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THE 

PIRATE'S PROGRESS 

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE U-BOAT 

BY 

WILLIAM ARCHER 




HARPER y BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 

IQlS 



S^T 



THE 
PIRATE'S PROGRESS 



THE 

PIRATE'S PROGRESS 

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE U-BOAT 

BY 

WILLIAM ARCHER 




HARPER fcf BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 

1918 



/<} 







CONTENTS 










CHAPTER 




PAGE 

vii 










xi 




1. 

2. 


The U-Boat as a Legitimate Weapon 
War 

First Attacks upon Merchant Ships 


of 


1 
10 




3. 


The Announcement of the First "Block- 


15 




4. 


The Asturias to the Falaba 






22 




5. 








29 




6. 


The Armenian to the Persia 






40 




7. 


America and the Sussex 






52 




8. 








61 




9. 


Murder by Submersion 






78 




10. 


Hospital Ships and Relief Ships 






86 
101 



PREFACE 

THE annals of the sea contain many stories 
of disaster, from the loss of the White Ship 
to the sinking of the Titanic and the Empress 
of Ireland. We have all been accustomed from 
childhood to read with deep emotion the accounts 
of historic shipwrecks, the tragic details con- 
densed by Byron into the stanza: 

Then rose from sea to sky the wild farewell, 
Then shrieked the timid and stood still the 
brave, 

Then some leaped overboard with dreadful yell, 
As eager to anticipate their grave; 

And the sea yawned around her like a hell. 
And down she sucked with her the whirling 
wave, 

As one who grapples with his enemy, 

And strives to strangle him before he die. 

Even more terrible than the stories of the 
disasters themselves are the accounts of the 
agonies endured by survivors drifting helplessly 
on rafts or in open boats, and dying, one by 
one, of hunger, thirst, and exposure. These 
things cannot but haunt the imagination, espe- 
cially of a seafaring race. There have been those 



Preface 

who have been tempted to question the benefi- 
cence of the Power which brings to pass, or 
permits,, such horrors as have frequently been 
enacted on the treacherous sea. 

But until the present war broke out it had 
occurred to no one to imagine that disasters 
due to "the act of God" would ever be redupli- 
cated with cold deliberation by the act of man. 
Who could have conceived, at midsummer, 1914, 
that more destruction to the world's merchant 
shipping, and suffering to harmless seamen and 
passengers, would be caused within the next 
three years by the calculated policy of a so-called 
civilised power, than had been attributable in 
a century to perils naturally incident to the 
lives of those who go down to the sea in ships? 
This is the phenomenon with which we are face 
to face to-day — the callousness of man far out- 
stripping in its ravages the heedless destructive- 
ness of natural forces. It is an appalling pic- 
ture, and one well calculated to give the final 
touch of bitterness to that loathing of the 
German idol — War — with which Germany 
has made it her business to inspire all reason- 
able men. 

The following pages contain a sketch of the 
gradual decline, in Germany's employment of the 
U-boat, from honourable to dishonourable, and 
finally to atrocious, uses. The time has not yet 
come for an exhaustive history of her piratical 



Preface 

career. Only a few of its more conspicuous 
episodes are here briefly recorded, but sufficient 
to show to what depths of infamy she has been 
dragged down by a false philosophy playing 
into the hands of an overweening national 
egoism. 



INTRODUCTORY 

WHEN war broke out in August, 1914, the 
value of the submarine was as yet un- 
tested. It was practically a new weapon. At 
the time of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 
it was not sufficiently developed to play any 
part. Its probable influence on naval warfare 
had, of course, been the subject of eager 
speculation, but with no guidance from experi- 
ence. Some authorities — among whom was Ad- 
miral Sir Percy Scott — thought that the " intro- 
duction of vessels that swim under water had 
entirely done away with the utility of the ships 
that swim on the top of the water." To many 
people in England, at the beginning of the 
war, this was a very disquieting doctrine; for, 
though our strength in submarines was great, 
it was manifest that the submarine could not I 
fight the submarine, and, if a few undersea V 
boats could destroy or paralyse a great battle 
fleet, it was possible that the Navy on which 
we so implicitly relied for the safety of our 
shores, and for our power to carry on the war, I 
might prove a broken reed. 



Introductory 

Events soon proved the baselessness of this 
apprehension. The submarine, at all events in 
its then stage of development, had made no 
revolution in naval warfare. Legitimately used 
as a fighting instrument, it was effective and 
formidable, but very far from all-powerful. The 
early successes of the German U-boats cost us 
the lives of many gallant seamen, and gave 
landsmen some uneasy moments. But neither 
in battle nor in the "war of attrition" did the 
submarine play anything like the determining 
part which had been predicted for it. Not 
until it had proved wholly indecisive as a factor 
in honourable warfare did Germany conceive the 
hope of reaching a decision in her favour by 
employing the U-boat as an instrument of ruth- 
less piracy. 

Let us briefly review the legitimate exploits 
of the German undersea fleet, before passing on 
to the immeasurably longer catalogue of its 
crimes. 



THE 
PIRATE'S PROGRESS 



THE 

PIRATE'S PROGRESS 

i 

rHE U-BOAT AS A LEGITIMATE WEAPON OF WAR 

SOME people had imagined 'that the very 
beginning of the war would be signalised 
py some spectacular submarine enterprise on 
jne side or the other. Nothing of the sort took 
place. It is true that on August 9 U-boats 
attempted an attack on the British first light 
cruiser squadron; but its only result was the 
loss of one of the assailants, the U 15, which was 
sunk by H.M.S. Birmingham. The war was a 
month old when the U-boats drew first blood. 
On September 5 the light cruiser Pathfinder, 
2,940 tons, built in 1904, was sunk off the Isle 
of May at the entrance to the Firth of Forth 
by the U 2, commanded by First-Lieutenant 
Hersing. The Pathfinder carried a complement 
of 268 officers and men, and there was consid- 
erable loss of life. 



2 The Pirate's Progress 

A little more than a fortnight later occurre 
an event which seemed for a moment to justif 
the high hopes which the German people ha(j 
been taught to entertain as to the possibilities 
of a "war of attrition.'' At 6.30 a.m. on Sep 
tember 22, the armoured cruisers Aboukir, Hogue 
and Cressy, on patrol duty in the North Sea 
had just separated to take up their day sta- 
tions, three miles apart, when the Aboukir "wail 
seen to reel violently, and then settle dowr 
with a list to port." Her consorts obeyed the 
natural impulse to close in upon her and attempt 
to save life. They were within about a quarteij 
of a mile of her, the Hogue on the starboarc 
bow and the Cressy on the other side, when twd 
tremendous crashes were heard in close succes| 
sion, and the Hogue "leapt up like a rowelled 
horse and quivered all over, just as a steel spring 
will quiver when firmly held at one end and 
sharply struck at the other." The Cressy, 
meanwhile, had opened fire on the insidious as- 
sailant, but without effect; for a few minutes 
later she herself was struck amidships by two 
torpedoes, and sank almost immediately. Two 
Dutch ships and a Lowestoft trawler did good 
work in helping to rescue 60 officers and 777 
men; but an equal number of officers and some 
1,400 men were drowned. This loss of life was; 
by far the most serious feature of the incident. 
The cruisers themselves, which were sister shipsj 



The U-Boat as a Legitimate Weapon 3 

of 12,000 tons apiece, had been built about the 
bjeginning of the century, and were rapidly 
s ecoming obsolete. 

4 The jubilation in Germany was naturally 
* ? reat, and Otto Weddigen, the commander who 
1 tad brought off this skilful and highly successful 
Exploit, was for some time a national hero of 
the first rank. He was rewarded not only with 
the Iron Cross, but with the order "Pour le 
Merited It is pleasant to add that his dis- 
tinguished ability was not his only merit. He 
afterwards gained a high reputation for his hu- 
mane treatment of the crews of merchant ships, 
fvho nicknamed him "the polite pirate." His 
iboat, the U 29, was sunk in the spring of 1915. 
[ Could such exploits have been repeated in 
any number, there might have been some hope 
of achieving the aim of German strategy, and 
so reducing the naval strength of Britain as to 
enable Germany to encounter her on the high 
seas with a fair chance of success. Unfortunate- 
ly for Von Tirpitz's calculations, Weddigen's 
swoop has remained unique. More important 
ships have, indeed, fallen victims to the sub- 
marine, but only at long intervals; and there has 
been no repetition of "three birds falling to one 
gun." That result, indeed, was attained in the 
present instance only because the Rogue and 
Cressy subordinated sound tactics to humanity, 
and thought more of saving life than of assur- 



1 



The Pirate's Progress 



ing their own safety. The Admiralty issuece 
orders to prevent the repetition of this generf 
ous error, stating that the rule which obtain 3 
in actual battle must be extended to such oc( 
casions — namely, that each unit must look afte^ 
itself. u 

On October 15, 1914, a small and obsolete 
cruiser, the Hawke, was torpedoed in the Nortl^ 
Sea, and sank in ten minutes, about 70 of thd 
officers and crew being saved. The Hawke had 
a displacement of 7,350 tons, and was built inl 
1889. This completes the record of U-boat suc-i 
cesses for 1914, so far as attacks on the British) 
Navy are concerned. 

The roll of legitimate successes for 1915 is) 
naturally much longer. It begins with the sink- 
ing in the Channel, on January 1, of the Formi-] 
dable, a battleship of 15,000 tons, built in 1901.; 
The night was stormy, the sea ran high, and,! 
being struck by two torpedoes, she settled downj 
very rapidly. Some boats were launched, how- 
ever, and 201 officers and men were saved out 
of a complement of between 700 and 800. The 
occupants of one boat were rescued with great 
bravery and skill by a Brixham smack, the 
Provident, W. Pillar, master. Lord Crewe said 
in the House of Lords on January 7: "I should 
like to tell the House that, after the Formidable 
was struck, her captain signalled to another ship 
that she was not to stand by, but to keep off, 



\ 



The U-Boat as a Legitimate Weapon 5 

is he believed that there was a submarine in 
the neighbourhood." 

On March 11, an auxiliary cruiser (armed 

merchantman), the Bayano, was sunk at the 

/■ Entrance to the Firth of Clyde. She went down 

'in three minutes, and only 30 lives were saved 

out of about 200. 

Exactly a month later the transport Way- 
farer was torpedoed, but did not sink, and was 
beached at Queenstown. 

On May 1 the destroyer Recruit (385 tons) 
was sunk in the North Sea, 4 officers and 21 men 
being saved and 39 lost. 

Perhaps the most important of all the U-boat 
exploits occurred on May 26 and 27, when the 
battleships Triumph and Majestic were sunk off 
Gallipoli. The Triumph was a ship of 11,800 tons, 
built in 1904; the Majestic, built in 1895, dis- 
placed 14,900 tons. The ships were not of great 
value, the Majestic especially being at the very 
end of her period of service; and in each case 
the loss of life was small. Nevertheless, it may 
fairly be said that the appearance of U-boats 
on the scene marked the turning-point of the 
Gallipoli expedition. They very seriously re- 
duced its chances of success; and this may be 
reckoned the most important strategic result 
they have achieved, apart, of course, from their 
conspicuous triumph in bringing America into 
the war. 



6 The Pirate's Progress 

On June 10 two torpedo-boats or "coasta| 
destroyers/' the Greenfly and the Mayfly, oi! 
215 tons apiece, were sunk in the North Sea.' 
Thirty-one lives were saved and between 20 and 
30 lost. 

Ten days later the Roxburgh, a 10,000 ton! 
cruiser, was struck by a torpedo in the North j 
Sea, but was not seriously damaged. 

On June 30 the destroyer Lightning (275 
tons) was torpedoed. She was brought into 
harbour, but 14 of her crew were missing. 

On August 8 the auxiliary cruiser India was 
torpedoed off Bodo, in Norwegian territorial) 
waters. Twenty-two officers and 120 men werej 
saved, but 10 officers and 150 men lost their f 
lives. 

In the iEgean on August 14 a very serious 
disaster occurred. The Royal Edward, trans- 
port (11,117 tons), was sent to the bottom, and 
carried with her about 1,000 men, 600 being 
saved. 

In the same waters, on September 2, the 
transport Southland was torpedoed, but reached 
Mudros under her own steam. The explosion, 
however, led to the loss of about 30 lives. 

The transport Ramazan was sunk by shell 
fire on September 19, off the island of Antiky- 
thera. There were 385 Indian troops on board, 
of whom 75 were saved. 

In October the transport Marquette was sunk 



The U-Boat as a Legitimate Weapon 7 

in the JEgesm; and in the Mediterranean, on 
November 3, the transport Mercian was shelled 
but not sunk. There was, however, a casualty 
list of nearly 100 killed and wounded. 

On November 5, the Tar a, an " armed board- 
ing steamer," was attacked by two U-boats and 
sunk in the Bay of Solium, on the frontier be- 
tween Egypt and Tripoli. Ten men of the crew 
were missing, having fallen into the hands of the 
Senussya tribe (or sect) of Arabs, from whom 
they were rescued, with other captives, in the 
following March. At the same place (apparent- 
ly on the following day) the Prince Abbas (300 
tons) and the Abdul Moneim (450 tons) were 
sunk. They were described by the Germans as 
" Anglo-Egyptian gunboats," but by the Brit- 
ish as small custom cruisers of no fighting 
value. 

In the following year, 1916, the list of legiti- 
mate U-boat achievements is only about half as 
long, and includes only one really notable inci- 
dent. On August 19 it was reported that the 
German High Seas Fleet had put to sea, and 
two light cruisers which set forth in search of 
it were torpedoed. They were the Nottingham, 
of 5,400 tons, built in 1914, and the Falmouth, 
of 5,250 tons, built in 1911. The remaining 
losses were as follows: 

The Primula, mine-sweeper, sunk on March 
1, in the Eastern Mediterranean, 3 lives lost. 



8 The Pirate's Progress 

The Lassoo, destroyer, torpedoed (or mined) 
on April 13, off the Dutch coast, 6 lives lost. 

The Clacton, mine-sweeper, sunk on August 
3, in the Levant, 6 lives lost. 

The Duke of Albany, armed boarding steamer, 
sunk on August 24, in the North Sea, 24 lives 
lost. 

The Zaida, armed yacht, sunk in the Gulf of 
Alexandretta. Date uncertain; 10 lives lost. 

The Franconia, engaged in transport duty, 
but carrying no troops at the time, sunk on 
October 4, 12 lives lost. 

The Genista, mine-sweeper, sunk. (Reported 
in Times, October 27.) 

The Russian, an empty transport, sunk. 
(Reported in Times, December 19.) 

To this list might be added a certain number 
of successful attacks by German or Austrian 
submarines upon French, Italian, or Russian 
naval units, but the roll is comparatively short. 

It appears, then, that as an instrument of 
" attrition," and even as a means of harassing 
maritime lines of communication, the submarine 
was far indeed from fulfilling German — or even 
English — expectation. In two years and a half 
it reckoned among its victims no " capital 
ships," and, so far as the British Navy was con- 
cerned, only eight vessels of any considerable im- 
portance — the Aboukir, Rogue, Cressy, Formi- 
dable, Triumph, Majestic, Nottingham, Falmouth. 



The U-Boat as a Legitimate Weapon 9 

It played, as we have seen, a conspicuous 
— perhaps a determining — part in defeating 
the Allied attack upon Gallipoli; but, on the 
other hand, we find scarcely any trace of the 
intervention of submarines in the Battle of Jut- 
land. In their action against transports the 
U-boats had some success — not at the vital 
point, namely, the English Channel, but in the 
Mediterranean. When we consider, however, 
how many millions of troops have been conveyed 
by sea for distances aggregating hundreds of 
thousands of miles, we realise that the percen- 
tage of losses due to submarine action has been 
absolutely infinitesimal. It is true, no doubt, 
that the military value of the submarine is not 
to be measured by the positive losses it inflicts, 
but rather by a factor impossible to estimate 
with any certainty — its deterrent effect upon 
potential enemy action. Even in this respect, 
however, the mine is probably the more formida- 
ble weapon of the two. We may say safely that, 
taking it all round, the submarine, as a fighting 
instrument, has proved a disappointment. 

It was on realising its inability to contribute 
on any decisive scale to the defeat of the Allied 
Navies that the German Government determined 
to use it as an instrument of sheer destruction, 
and to conduct a reckless and ruthless campaign 
against Allied, and ultimately against neutral, 
commerce. 



II 

FIRST ATTACKS UPON MERCHANT SHIPS 

IT took Germany some six months to make 
up her mind to the systematic employ- 
ment of her U-boats as commerce-destroyers. 
During those six months (August, 1914 — Jan- 
uary, 1915, inclusive) a good deal of harm was 
done to Allied shipping by a few warships which 
had been at large at the outbreak of hostilities, 
notably by the Emden in the Indian Ocean. 
The proceedings of these ships were, if not in- 
contestably legal, at least plausibly defensible 
under international law. It is true that they 
constantly sank their prizes instead of taking 
them into port to have their status determined 
by a Prize Court; but it is generally admitted 
that the destruction of a prize is permissible 
when circumstances render it dangerous or im- 
practicable to bring it into "harbour; and as 
practically all Germany's oversea harbours had 
been seized very early in the war, it is manifest 
that there was neither port nor Prize Court 
within the raiders' reach. The right to sink 



First Attacks upon Merchant Ships 11 

captured ships is limited by the imperative con- 
dition that the captor "must make due provision 
for the safety of passengers and crew, and for 
the preservation of the ship's papers"; and this 
condition the raiders honourably observed. 
Captain Miiller, of the Emden, collected the 
crews and passengers of a number of prizes 
on board a single vessel, which he then set 
free. 

A few isolated instances of submarine at- 
tacks on merchant shipping occurred in this 
period, but only one was marked by gross in- 
humanity. 

The first commercial victim was the steam- 
ship Glitra, from Grangemouth to Stavanger, 
which was stopped by a U-boat about noon on 
October 20, 1914, nine miles S.W. of Skudesnses. 
A boat's crew of 5 men boarded the steamer, 
and when the captain lowered the British flag 
the German officer tore it up and trampled upon 
it. The "Gott strafe England" craze was then, 
it will be remembered, at its height. The crew 
were allowed ten minutes to take to their boats, 
and then the ship was sunk, it is believed by 
opening the bottom valves. The Hamburger 
Nachrichten described this exploit as "a brisk 
Viking-stroke." 

On November 23 the Malachite was held up 
in Havre roadstead, the crew were allowed ten 
minutes to leave the ship, and it was then sunk 



12 The Pirate's Progress 

by shell fire. Three days later (November 26) 
the Primo was sunk off Cape Antifer. In neither 
of these cases was the crew exposed to any 
serious danger. 

Very different was the case of the Amiral 
Ganteaume. This passenger ship, bound from 
Calais to Havre, with 2,500 refugees on board, 
was wantonly torpedoed, without a moment's 
warning, twelve miles from Cape Grisnez. The 
Channel passenger steamer Queen ranged up 
alongside of the stricken ship, and "with great 
resourcefulness and daring" took off most of 
the passengers. About 50, however, lost their 
lives. That the disaster was not due to a mine 
was proved by the discovery of a fragment of 
a torpedo in the hull of the ship, which did not 
ultimately sink. This was the first of the Ger- 
man maritime outrages, and it was no fault of 
the perpetrators that it was not also the worst. 
Had the torpedo taken full effect, the death- 
roll would have been longer than that of the 
Lusitania. The attack was without a shadow 
of excuse. What military purpose could be 
served by sinking a passenger ship bound from 
one French port to another, and manifestly (for 
the incident took place in broad daylight) 
crowded with civilians? Whoever was respon- 
sible for the attack, which took place on October 
26, was clearly animated by the sheer lust of 
murder which is awakened in so many Germans 



First Attacks upon Merchant Ships 13 

by the sight of defenceless enemies. The sailor 
who commanded the unknown U-boat was a 
true brother-in-arms of the soldiers who, a few 
weeks earlier, had marched burning and mas- 
sacring through Belgium. 

On January 22, 1915, the steamship Durward 
was stopped by a U-boat about thirteen miles 
from the lightship Maas. The crew was ordered 
to take to the boats, no time being allowed for 
the removal of their private belongings. The 
submarine then towed the boats to a certain 
distance, ordered them to wait there while it 
sank the ship, and then towed them onwards in 
the direction of the lightship. A week later 
(January 30) two ships, the Ben Cruachan and 
the Linda Blanche, were sunk, in both cases with 
reasonable consideration for the safety of the 
crews. The men of the Ben Cruachan were given 
ten minutes to leave the ship, the German offi- 
cer, who spoke " perfect English/' bidding them 
"get as many of their belongings together as 
they could." The ship was sunk by bombs. In 
the case of the Linda Blanche, the men on board 
the submarine "handed cigars and cigarettes to 
the crew" as they took to their boats. Deliber- 
ate inhumanity had not yet developed into a 
system, though the Kolnische Zeitung, about the 
middle of the month, had published an article 
declaring that "in future German submarines 
and aircraft would wage war against British 



14 The Pirate's Progress 

mercantile vessels without troubling themselves 
in any way about the fate of the crews." 
This was evidently an inspired forecast, and 
it was to be promptly and amply justified by 
events. 



Ill 



the announcement of the first 
" blockade" 

A FEW days before Christmas, 1914, Grand 
Admiral von Tirpitz granted an interview 
to the representative of the United Press of 
America, which very clearly indicated that 
Germany was already planning a submarine 
"blockade" of the British Islands. "America," 
he said, "has not raised her voice in protest, 
and has done little or nothing against the closing 
of the North Sea to neutral shipping by England. 
What would America say if Germany should 
declare a submarine war against all enemy trad- 
ing vessels?" By the "closing of the North 
Sea" he meant the measure to which Britain 
had been driven by the German practice of in- 
discriminate mine-sowing under neutral flags. 
In the interests of neutral as well as British 
shipping, the Government had announced on 
November 3, not that the North Sea was 
"closed," but that a safe passage through it 
would be kept open for all neutral ships en- 



16 The Pirate's Progress 

tering and leaving it by way of the Straits of 
Dover. It was only the northern passage be- 
tween the Hebrides and the Faroe Islands that 
was closed, in the sense that vessels using it 
must do so at their peril. 

On January 26, 1915, it was announced that 
the German Federal Council had decided to take 
under its control all the stocks of corn and flour 
in the country, on and from February 1. It was 
at once anticipated that this measure would 
cause the British Government to regard all 
cargoes of foodstuffs destined for Germany as 
consigned to the German Government, and 
therefore contraband of war. The Germans 
afterwards tried to represent their attempted 
blockade as a measure of retaliation against 
this action of the British Government; but, to 
say nothing of the fact that the blockade had 
been threatened by Von Tirpitz six weeks 
earlier, it was definitely announced before the 
British Government had taken any step what- 
ever. The notification of the intended blockade 
was issued in Berlin on February 4; not until 
the following day did the British Foreign Office 
announce that the Government was consider- 
ing what steps it should take in view of the 
German commandeering of foodstuffs. 

It so happened that, on January 23, a steam- 
ship named the Wilhelmina had cleared from 
New York for Hamburg, conveying a cargo of 



Announcement of First " Blockade " 17 

food shipped by an American firm, and con- 
signed to an American citizen in Germany. The 
Foreign Office note of February 5 ran as follows: 
"If the destination and cargo of the Wilhelmina 
are as supposed, the cargo will, if the vessel is 
intercepted, be submitted to a Prize Court in 
order that the new situation created by the 
German decree may be examined, and a decision 
reached upon it after full consideration." This 
course was, in fact, pursued, and it was deter- 
mined that the action of the German Govern- 
ment in taking foodstuffs under its exclusive 
control justified the Allies in treating all pro- 
visions consigned to Germany as contraband of 
war. But it is clearly absurd to represent as a 
result of this British measure a U-boat campaign 
which had been formally announced while the 
British Government was still considering its 
course of action, and before it had issued any 
statement whatever on the subject. 
The German proclamation ran thus: 

The waters round Great Britain and Ireland, in- 
cluding the English Channel, are hereby proclaimed a 
war region. 

On and after February 18th every enemy merchant 
vessel found in this region will be destroyed, without 
its always being possible to warn the crews or passengers 
of the dangers threatening. 

Neutral ships will also incur danger in the war 
■ region, where, in view of the misuse of neutral flags 
ordered by the British Government, and incidents in- 
evitable in sea warfare, attacks intended for hostile ships 
may affect neutral ships also. 



18 The Pirate's Progress 

The sea passage to the north of the Shetland Islands, 
and the eastern region of the North Sea in a zone of at 
least 30 miles along the Netherlands coast, are not 
menaced by any danger. 

(Signed) Berlin, February 4th, 

VON POHL, 

Chief of Marine Staff. 

It will be seen that the warfare here threat- 
ened differs from the " unlimited" warfare of 
two years later in the position assigned to neu- 
tral shipping. Neutrals are warned that they 
had better avoid the "war region," but it is 
indicated that if they are attacked it will only 
be by mistake, and that, for these mistakes, 
they will have to blame the nefarious policy of 
the British Government with regard to the use 
of neutral flags. 

There was not a single point at which this 
proclamation did not fly in the face of inter- 
national law as stated by all jurists and as 
interpreted by all courts. 

The use of a neutral flag by a vessel attempt- 
ing to elude capture has always been held legiti- 
mate. Attacking under false colours is rightly 
prohibited — but that is a totally different matter. 

The warship which doubts the genuineness 
of the flag displayed by a merchantman can put 
the matter to the test by exercising its unques- 
tioned right of "visit and search." Thus the 
mistakes with which neutrals were threatened 
were mistakes which had no right to happen. 



Announcements of First " Blockade " 19 

As for the avowed intention of attacking enemy 
ships without warning (for nothing else was 
implied in the impudent phrase " without its 
being always possible to warn," etc.), it stood 
in flagrant contravention of every accepted prin- 
ciple and of all civilised practice. We have al- 
ready seen, in discussing the case of the Emden 
and other raiders, that the sinking of prizes had 
hitherto been regarded as a measure to be re- 
sorted to only in the most exceptional circum- 
stances. Here are some pronouncements of 
German authorities on the point: 

Gessner: As a general rule, the captor 
may not scuttle or otherwise destroy the prize 
he has taken in the open sea. He may do 
so, however, on his own responsibility, in 
circumstances of force majeure. 

Heffter: The destruction of an enemy 
prize is not justifiable except in case of ex- 
treme necessity. 

Bluntschli : As a rule, enemy prizes must 
be taken into the captor's port for adjudica- 
tion. Destruction is permissible only in case 
of absolute necessity. The blockade of the 
captor's port does not in itself constitute a case 
of absolute necessity* 

Germany now claimed the right to make a 
universal rule of what had hitherto been sanc- 
tioned only as a rare exception, arguing that the 

* See Sir Frederick Smith: Destruction of Merchant Ships, 
pp. 28, 29. 



20 The Pirate's Progress 

submarine had created a new situation which 
had not been anticipated at the time when inter- 
national law took shape. That was, it is true, 
an arguable point, and it was natural that Ger- 
many should decline to be bound by so strict 
a reading of existing regulations as would have 
made her U-boats entirely powerless as a weapon 
against the commerce of her enemies. But she 
not only resolved to sink every enemy ship that 
came in her way; she made up her mind to 
do so without that preliminary visit and search 
which had hitherto been held indispensable, and 
especially without taking those measures for the 
security of non-combatant crews and passengers 
which had been regarded as the most imperative 
of obligations. Here, she could allege no excuse 
in the nature of force majeure. It was perfectly 
possible for her to act humanely, as one or two 
of her commanders proved. By doing so she 
might to some extent have reduced the effec- 
tiveness of her campaign of havoc; but she 
would have had her reward in retaining some 
shred of the respect of the civilised world. Her 
disregard of every consideration of humanity 
was exactly on a level with her frequent use, in 
Belgium and Northern France, of civilian screens 
to mask an infantry advance.* Such practices 
are defensible only on the theory that Germany 

* Indignantly disclaimed by Von Moltke, but established by 
irrefutable evidence. 



Announcements of First " Blockade " 21 

must forgo no possible advantage, of however 
dastardly a nature — the theory, indeed, which 
her War-Book indicates almost without disguise, 
and on which she has consistently acted in every 
domain of warlike activity. But in her U-boat 
campaign, as in her treatment of Belgium, she 
has exceeded even the brutality which her theory 
demands. We shall have to record many deeds 
of a callous cruelty from which no appreciable 
advantage was to be reaped — deeds which betray 
in their perpetrators a positive delight in murder 
for its own sake. 



IV 



THE "ASTURIAS" TO THE "FALABA 



FEBRUARY, 1915, opened with an attempt 
to torpedo the hospital-ship Asturias, 
which fortunately failed. We shall have to 
speak more at length of this incident when the 
time comes to chronicle the deliberate and sys- 
tematic war upon hospital-ships. For the pres- 
ent it remained an isolated and motiveless crime, 
which may be bracketed with the attack on the 
Amiral Ganteaume, as showing the reckless 
ferocity which was beginning to prevail among 
the U-boat commanders. 

The " blockade," as we have seen, was pro- 
claimed on February 4, but a fortnight's grace 
was allowed to neutrals to clear out of the "war 
region," and leave the British to their fate. As 
a matter of fact, nothing of great importance 
occurred during this fortnight. 

On February 19, the day after the expiry of 
the period of grace, the Norwegian oil-steamer 
Belridge was torpedoed off Beachy Head, but 
managed to reach port. On the following day 



The " Asturias " to the " Falaba " 23 

there were two victims: the Cambank was tor- 
pedoed without warning, while the crew of the 
Downshire were allowed five minutes to take to 
their boats. On the 23rd the Oakly, and on 
the 24th the Deptford, were torpedoed without 
warning. The 24th, too, witnessed the sinking 
of the Harpalion. The entire absence of warn- 
ing is apparent from the account of the attack 
given by the second officer, Mr. Harper: "We 
had just sat down to tea, and the chief engineer 
was saying grace. He had just uttered the 
words, 'For what we are about to receive may 
the Lord make us truly thankful/ when there 
came an awful crash. I never saw such a smash 
as it caused." There is a certain grim humour 
in the situation, which, however, the sailors do 
not appear to have appreciated. 

Mr. Asquith stated in the House of Commons 
on March 1 that the lawless submarine war was 
about to be met by a tightening of the strangle- 
hold upon Germany; and an Order-in-Council 
of March 11 made the definite announcement in 
the following terms: 

His Majesty has decided to adopt further 
measures in order to prevent commodities of 
any kind from reaching or leaving Germany, 
though such measures will be enforced with- 
out risk to neutral ships or to neutral or non- 
combatant life, and in strict observance of the 
dictates of humanity. 



24 The Pirate's Progress 

Two days earlier (March 9) three ships, the 
Tangistan, Blackwood, and Princess Victoria, had 
been torpedoed off Scarborough, Hastings, and 
Liverpool respectively. In no case was any 
warning given, and of the crew of the Tangistan 
— 38 in number — only one was saved. 

On March 11 (the date of the Order-in-Coun- 
cil) Commander Otto Weddigen makes his last 
appearance on the scene. From the small U 9 
with which he sank the three cruisers, he had 
been transferred to a much more powerful craft, 
the U 29. On this day, off the Casquet rocks, 
he sank the steamer Aden-wen, but gave the 
crew ten minutes to take to their boats, ob- 
serving, "We wish no lives to be lost." He 
also provided a dry suit for a sailor who had 
fallen into the water, thus acting up to the nick- 
name which he had earned of "the polite pirate." 
He had, unfortunately, only a few days more of 
life before him. On March 26 the Admiralty 
announced that U 29 had been sunk. "There 
seems to be no doubt," said The Times, "that 
Captain Weddigen' s career has now come to an 
end, with that of his new boat. Our satisfac- 
tion at the occurrence is mingled with some 
regret at the death of a man who, so far as is 
known, behaved bravely and skilfully, and 
where it was possible displayed to his victims 
the humanity expected of seamen, but which has 
not been characteristic of all his brother officers." 



The " Asturias " to the " Falaba " 25 

This is almost the last good word that hasi 
to be, or can be, said for German conduct at| 
sea. It is true that on March 13, a few days 
before Weddigen lost his life, some humanity 
had been shown in the sinking of the collier 
Hartdale. The boats got off, but the captain, 
chief officer, steward, and a boy remained on 
board until the ship was awash. The boy was 
unfortunately drowned, but the three men were 
taken on board the submarine and were well 
treated. Ultimately, they were transferred to 
the Swedish steamship Heimdal, which had taken 
the boats in tow. It is also related that in the 
course of the summer, when attacks upon fish- 
ing boats were the order of the day, and when 
many fishermen were brutally done to death 
without being given a chance for their lives, 
a welcome exception to the general practice oc- 
curred when the commander of one submarine 
allowed the crew of a trawler he attacked to 
get away in their boat. "We are not Prus- 
sians," he declared to the skipper; "it is only 
the Prussians who would let you drown." At 
sea as on land, unfortunately, the Prussians 
were enormously in the majority. 

The Atlanta was sunk on March 14, and the 
Fingal on the 15th. In the latter case there was 
a death-roll of six, including the chief mate 
and the stewardess, who is said to have been the 
first woman victim of the submarine war. On 



26 The Pirate's Progress 

March 25 the Dutch steamship Medea was de- 
liberately sunk by gunfire off Beachy Head. 
The crew, however, were all saved. Two days 
later the Aguila was sunk by the same method. 
The crew were nominally given four minutes to 
leave the ship, but the submarine opened fire 
while the boats were being launched, killing the 
chief engineer, the boatswain, and a donkey- 
man, and wounding the third engineer and 
several seamen. A member of the crew said 
that one boat contained ten men, the stewardess, 
and one woman passenger. As it was being 
launched the passenger cried out, "I'm shot!" 
and fell over the edge of the gunwale next 
to the ship's side. The next moment heavy 
seas capsized the boat, and neither passenger 
nor stewardess was ever seen again. The Ger- 
mans, however, were not entirely callous, for 
they told the trawler Ottilie where the boats 
had been left, and enabled her to find them. 
On the same day, March 27, the steamer Vosges 
was sunk by shell fire after a two hours' chase, 
the chief engineer being killed. 

The following day, Sunday, March 28, wit- 
nessed the first U-boat atrocity on a grand scale. 
The Elder-Dempster liner Falaba, Liverpool to 
South Africa, was just passing out of St. George's 
Channel when she was pursued by a submarine. 
Seeing that escape was hopeless, the captain 
stopped. " There is some doubt," says The 



The " Asturias " to the " Falaba " 27 

Times, " about the exact number of minutes' 
grace accorded by the German commander, but 
it is agreed that well within ten minutes the 
Falaba was torpedoed at 100 yards range, when 
the enemy could not fail to see that the deck 
was still crowded and the first boat was actual- 
ly half - way down the davits. The torpedo 
struck near the engine-room, and the Falaba 
sank rapidly. The callousness of the attack was 
aggravated by the conduct of the Germans when 
their victims were struggling in the water. As 
they raised their arms, reaching out for life- 
buoys or scraps of wreckage, the Germans looked 
on and laughed, and answered their cries for 
help with jeers. This charge of inhumanity is 
not founded on any isolated allegation. It is the 
definite testimony of some half-dozen survivors." 
The captain was not drowned, but died of 
exposure. 

Among the victims — 111 in number — was an 
American citizen, Mr. Leon Chester Thrasher. 
This naturally intensified the indignation felt in 
America, and it was already foreseen in many 
quarters that if Germany persisted in so reckless 
a disregard of the rights not only of non-com- 
batants, but of neutrals, the traditional aloofness 
of America could not be permanently main- 
tained. "The sinking of the Falaba," said the 
New York Times, "is perhaps the most shock- 
ing crime of the war." Though less wanton and 



28 The Pirate's Progress 

purposeless than the attack on the Arrviral 
Ganteaume, it was equally cruel in intention and 
more disastrous in effect. It proved beyond all 
question that the spirit of modern Germany was 
as ruthlessly inhuman at sea as on land; but 
the world had not long to wait for still more 
startling evidence to the same effect. 



THE "lUSITANIA" 



HITHERTO we have followed with some 
minuteness the record of German sub- 
marine activities, in order to trace the gradual 
decline from legitimate and honourable warfare 
to indiscriminate maritime murder. Hence- 
forth, on the other hand, anything like a com- 
plete " Catalogue of the Ships" would be a mere 
weariness of the spirit, even were it possible. 
We must be content to register some of the 
more salient incidents of the campaign of 
massacre. 

As to the principles inspiring it there is no 
longer any doubt. Six months after the out- 
break of the war Germany has finally realised 
that her scheme of world-conquest has mis- 
carried, and that she is standing on the defen- 
sive. The mass of her people, and her soldiers 
and sailors not the least, have from the outset 
taken quite seriously the ten-thousand-times 
repeated phrase "Dieser uns aufgezwungene 
Krieg" ("This war which has been forced upon 



30 The Pirate's Progress 

us"). On the part of her rulers it had at first 
been a conscious and purposeful lie — a deliberate 
move in the war gambit invented by Bismarck, 
who openly confessed that the people would not 
throw themselves with sufficient ardour into a 
war in which they knew themselves to be the ag- 
gressors. But even the rulers have by this time 
repeated the formula so often that they have 
perhaps come to believe in it; and rulers and 
people are at one in holding that, when Germany 
is on the defensive, she is absolved from all the 
traditional decencies of civilised warfare, and not 
only entitled, but in duty bound, to ignore every 
obligation of humanity that conflicts in the 
slightest degree with her immediate interest and 
convenience. Only thus can we account for the 
fact that such events as the sinking of the Falaba, 
to say nothing of the greater crimes to follow, 
seem to have elicited scarcely a word of protest 
in Germany. Much light is thrown upon the 
German frame of mind by a little incident 
which occurred just at the time we have now 
reached. 

On April 1, 1915, three trawlers, the Jason, 
Gloxinia, and Nellie, were sunk by the U 10. 
The crew of the Jason were taken on board the 
submarine and were well treated. The com- 
mander expressed regret, but said, "We have 
orders to sink everything. It is war, and you 
started it." That is the whole German case. 



The " Lusitania " 31 

It is built upon the distinction which undoubt- 
edly exists between the rights of the aggressor 
and the rights of his victim. If a highway rob- 
ber were to attack me on a lonely road, I should 
not consider myself bound, in repelling him, to 
adhere to the delicacies of the duello, or even 
to the principles of fair-play. The Germans 
were right in insisting upon this ethical distinc- 
tion — the weak point of their case lay in the 
fact that they, and not the Allies, were the 
highway robbers. It may also be mentioned 
that even the victim of an assault is scarcely 
justified in massacring the wife and children of 
his assailant. 

The most notable feature of April, 1915, was 
the harrying of the British fishing fleet. On 
April 19 the Admiralty announced: 

To-day a German submarine sank by a 
torpedo the trawler Vanilla. 

The trawler Fermo endeavoured to rescue 
the crew, but she was fired at and driven off. 
All hands on the Vanilla were lost. 

This killing of fisher-folk for no military 
purpose should not escape attention. It is 
the second murder of this character com- 
mitted within a week. 

The Fermo was chased for four hours and 
barely escaped. Three days later the trawler 
St. Lawrence was shelled and sunk. Most of 

3 



32 The Pirate's Progress 

the crew escaped, but the submarine prevented 
the rescue of two men who had been left on 
board. 

Meanwhile, neutrals were learning the base- 
lessness of the pretence in the German manifesto 
that what they had to fear in the war zone were 
only inevitable errors and accidents. Neutral 
ships were being destroyed with the greatest 
deliberation. On March 31 the Norwegian 
barque Nor was burnt because her cargo of 
timber rendered her practically unsinkable. On 
April 22, two Norwegian sailing ships, the Oscar 
and the Eva, were deliberately sunk by gun- 
fire; and the Norwegians suffered other losses. 
In the first half of April two Dutch steamers, the 
Katwyk and the Schieland, were torpedoed and 
sunk. On May 1 the American tank steamer 
Gulflight, from Port Arthur (Texas) to Rouen, 
was torpedoed without warning off the Scilly 
Islands. The captain died of heart failure, and 
the wireless operator and a Spanish seaman 
were drowned. This event caused great excite- 
ment in the United States; yet the feeling it 
aroused was but a ripple compared with the 
tidal wave of horror and indignation which swept 
over not only America, but all countries in which 
war madness had not stifled human feeling, at 
the news which just a week later was flashed 
round the world. 

In the last week of April many of the leading 



The " Lusitania " 33 

papers of the United States contained the follow- 
ing advertisement: 

Travellers intending to embark for an 
Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of 
war exists between Germany and her Allies 
and Great Britain and her Allies; that the 
zone of war includes the waters adjacent to 
the .British Isles; that in accordance with the 
formal notice given by the Imperial German 
Government vessels flying the flag of Great 
Britain or any of her Allies are liable to de- 
struction in those waters; and that travellers 
sailing in the war zone in ships of Great 
Britain or her Allies do so at their own risk. 

Imperial German Embassy, Washington. 
April 22. 

It was an unheard-of proceeding for the 
Embassy of a belligerent Power thus to address 
a neutral nation through the public Press; but 
the world was growing accustomed to unheard-of 
proceedings on Germany's part, and nobody paid 
any attention to this one. Meanwhile, well- 
known people who had booked passages on the 
Lusitania, due to sail from New York on May 1, 
were receiving anonymous or pseudonymous tele- 
grams warning them that the ship was doomed. 
It does not appear, however, that a single pas- 
sage was cancelled. The German threats were 
considered to be mere bluff, no one believing 
possible such an outrage upon the law of nations 



34 The Pirate's Progress 

and the most elementary principles of humanity 
as an attack upon an unarmed liner, carrying 
many hundreds of non-combatants and many 
scores of neutrals. 

The actual numbers were — 

Saloon passengers . . . 292 
Second-class passengers . 602 
Third-class passengers . .361 
Crew 651 



Total 1,906 

All went well until, on the morning of Friday, 
May 7, the Irish coast was sighted. The day 
was very fine, the sea smooth. In order "to 
reach the bar at Liverpool at a time when he 
could proceed up the river without stopping to 
pick up a pilot," Captain Turner reduced the 
speed to 18 knots. Fastnet was passed about 
eleven o'clock. At two, the ship was fifteen 
miles south of the Old Head of Kinsale. At 
2.15, without a moment's warning, and, indeed, 
before any one knew that there was a submarine 
in the neighbourhood, she was struck in the 
region of the engine-ioom, either by a single 
torpedo or by two in close succession. The 
breaking of the main steam-pipe paralysed the 
engines, so that it was impossible to stop her; 
and this, along with the strong list to starboard 
which the ship immediately took, made it very 



The " Lusitania " 35 

difficult to get the boats safely launched. She 
had still perceptible way on her when she sank 
at 2.36, the time when Captain Turner's watch 
stopped. Ten or twelve boats and rafts in all 
got clear of the ship, and some survivors (the 
captain among them) were picked up in the 
water by the rescue ships which reached the 
scene two or three hours later. The total num- 
ber saved is believed to have been 772, so that 
the death-roll may be set down at 1,134. Out 
of 218 American passengers, 79 survived. 

It would be useless to attempt any descrip- 
tion of the final scene. Since the sinking of the 
Titanic, just three years earlier, such tragedies 
have been only too familiar to the imagination. 
But the horror was heightened in the case of 
the Lusitania by the fact that she did not, like 
the Titanic, fall a victim to an incalculable 
caprice of destiny, but to the deliberate wicked- 
ness of human beings, dehumanised by a di- 
abolical code of military ethics. "There was no 
screaming at the last," says one account, "only 
a long, wailing, mournful, despairing, beseech- 
ing cry." When Germany is, in the fullness of 
time, restored to sanity, that wail will surely 
haunt her dreams for many a day. 

At the moment, the news was received with 
exultation in the Fatherland. A medal was 
struck to celebrate the event, and subscriptions 
were got up to testify the national gratitude to 



36 The Pirate's Progress 

the heroic crew of the U-boat. The Kolnische 
Zeitung said: 

The news will be received by the German 
people with unanimous satisfaction, since it 
proves to England and the whole world that 
Germany is quite in earnest in regard to her 
submarine warfare. 

The Kolnische Volkszeitung said: 

With joyful pride we contemplate this 
latest deed of our Navy, and it will not be 
the last. 

Austria, represented by the Neue Freie Presse, 
joined in the chorus of jubilation. But perhaps 
the most remarkable utterance called forth by 
the event was that of a clergyman, Pastor D. 
Baumgarten, who said, in the course of an ad- 
dress on the Sermon on the Mount: 

Whoever cannot prevail upon himself to 
approve from the bottom of his heart the 
sinking of the Lusitania — whoever cannot con- 
quer his sense of the gigantic cruelty (unge- 
heure Grausamkeit) to unnumbered perfectly 
innocent victims . . . and give himself up to 
honest delight at this victorious exploit of 
German defensive power — him we judge to be 
no true German. 

It would seem that the people rose nobly to this 
test, and that there were few indeed who did 



The " Lusitania " 3? 

not approve themselves true Germans by Pastor 
Baumgarten's standard. 

Looking back from the vantage ground of 
two-and-a-half years, we may say that our sense 
of the hideousness of the crime is almost over- 
shadowed by our perception of its colossal 
stupidity. It is certain that every man, woman, 
and child done to death that day has risen again 
in the shape of a thousand fighting-men — per- 
haps two or three thousand — supplied in pro- 
fusion with all the appurtenances of war, and 
bent on the elimination from human affairs of 
the spirit which sank the Lusitania. "She was 
carrying," say the Germans, "5,400 cases of am- 
munition." If that was so, the German Navy 
had every right, on proving their case by visit 
and search, to claim her condemnation in a 
Prize Court. It may even be conceded at a 
pinch that, as her captors could scarcely take 
her to Bremen or Wilhelmshaven, they might 
have been justified in sinking her, after providing 
for the safety of passengers. "But," it may be 
replied, "she was one of the fastest ships afloat. 
If she had chosen to show her heels, the U-boat 
could never have overhauled her. ' ' That means, 
of course, that the U-boat, like every other 
weapon of war, has its limitations. It cannot 
do everything that Germany would desire; but 
that is a poor reason for supplementing its legit- 
imate powers by a resort to cold-blooded mur- 



38 The Pirate's Progress 

der. If the U-boat had acted legally, and the 
ship had put herself technically in the wrong, 
there might have been nice questions of casuistry 
as to the course which the captors, or would-be 
captors, were entitled to pursue. As it was, 
no question of casuistry arose. The verdict of 
international law goes as clearly against the 
aggressors as the verdict of humanity, and Ger- 
many will long have cause to rue the hour when 
the engine was launched that sank "the stately 
ship so beautiful," and strewed the summer sea 
with the corpses of innocent women and children. 
The legal aspect of the case was cogently 
summed up in the following passages from the 
Note addressed by President Wilson to the Ger- 
man Government: 

The Government of the United States has 
been apprised that the German Imperial Gov- 
ernment considered themselves to be obliged by 
the extraordinary circumstances of the present 
war, and the measures adopted by their ad- 
versaries in seeking to cut Germany off from 
all commerce, to adopt measures of retaliation 
which go much beyond the ordinary methods 
of warfare at sea, in the proclamation of a war 
zone from which they warned neutral ships 
to keep away. This Government has already 
taken occasion to inform the Imperial German 
Government that it cannot admit the adoption 
of such measures or such a warning of danger 
to operate as in any degree in abbreviation of 



The " Lusitania " 39 

the rights of American shipmasters or Ameri- 
can citizens bound on lawful errands ao pas- 
sengers in merchant ships of belligerent na- 
tionality, and that it must hold the Imperial 
German Government to strict accountability 
for any infringement of those rights, whether 
intentional or incidental. 

It does not understand the Imperial Ger- 
man Government to question those rights, but 
assumes on the contrary that the Imperial 
Government accept as a matter of course the 
rule that the lives of non-combatants, whether 
they be of neutral citizenship or citizens of 
one of the nations at war, cannot lawfully or 
rightly be put in jeopardy by the capture or 
destruction of unarmed merchantmen, and 
recognise also, as all other nations do, the 
obligation to take the usual precaution of 
visit and search to ascertain whether a sus- 
pected merchantman is in fact of belligerent 
nationality or is in fact carrying contraband 
under a neutral flag. 

Many people felt at the time, in America no 
less than in the Allied countries, that the oc- 
casion was not one that could be met by the 
issue of diplomatic notes, however stern; but 
events have conclusively shown that it was 
wisdom and not pusillanimity that dictated 
President Wilson's policy of patience, even to 
the eleventh hour. 



VI 



the " Armenian" to the " Persia" 

DAY by day the sinkings went on. From 
a statement issued by the Admiralty on 
June 21, 1915, it appeared that from the begin- 
ning of the "blockade" up to that date, 75 
ships had been destroyed by submarines and 
72 fishing vessels. On July 29, Mr. Bonar Law 
stated in Parliament that, up to July 27, ap- 
proximately 1,550 persons had been killed as a 
result of U-boat attacks upon British merchant 
ships, and 22 as a result of attacks upon neutrals. 
As the Lusitania massacre accounted for 1,134 
lives out of the 1,550, it would appear that the 
victims in minor incidents numbered 416. Be 
it remembered that, had respect been paid 
either to the law of nations or to ordinary hu- 
manity, almost all of these lives would have 
been saved. 

On the evening of June 28, between 6 and 
7 o'clock, the Leyland liner Armenian, from 
Newport News to Avonmouth, was off Trevose 
Head, when a submarine was sighted at a dis- 



The " Armenian " to the " Persia " 41 

tance of about four miles. It fired two shots 
across the liner's bows, as a signal to stop. 
The rest may be told in the words of Captain 
Trickery : 

Did I stop! No fear! I put my stern 
to him and ran for it. The boats had been 
slung out, and I ordered the crew to get into 
them, or stand by in case of emergency. We 
were shelled continuously, and the shrapnel 
killed several of the crew, and cut away the 
falls of some of the lifeboats, throwing the 
men into the sea. It was a desperate chase, 
and I had tq realise that the enemy was gain- 
ing on me. But we did not intend to give 
in without a struggle. First my steering-gear 
was knocked out of order by a shell, then an- 
other fell in the engine-room, and a third 
carried the Marconi house away. Another 
shell disabled the men in the stoke-hold, pre- 
venting me from getting steam. 

The ship was then on fire in three places, 
and I decided to surrender. We had resisted 
the enemy for an hour, and 12 or 13 men 
were lying dead on the deck. Some of the 
lifeboats were smashed, but there were quite 
enough left for the crew, which had been 
reduced through shell-fire by 29. It was 7.40 
p.m. when we surrendered, and at 7 minutes 
past 8 the Armenian went down, two tor- 
pedoes being fired before she sank. The sub- / 
marine commander showed us every civility j J 
after we had given in, and he picked up some 
of our crew who, owing to the damage to 



42 The Pirate's Progress 

lifeboats, had fallen into the water. Most of 
the crew who perished were Americans. 

The vessel was carrying 1,414 mules, and 
about 20 of the .men who lost their lives were 
American muleteers, some of them negroes. In 
this case the submarine was acting within the 
letter of the law, since the Armenian had not 
obeyed the signal to stop; but as it had been 
proved in many cases that surrender was no 
guarantee against outrage, the plain fact was 
that Germany had annulled the law, and could 
not in equity plead its non-observance as an 
excuse for slaughter. 

Barely a week later another merchant steam- 
er set a U-boat at defiance, and succeeded in 
escaping, though not without tragic losses, more 
than half its crew being killed or wounded. The 
Anglo-Calif ornian, of London,- was off the Irish 
coast on the morning of July 4 when she sighted 
a submarine which at once began firing at the 
wireless apparatus. What followed is thus nar- 
rated by one of the survivors: 

The submarine kept circling about the 
ship, endeavouring to get into position to dis- 
charge a torpedo, but was baffled by the skill 
of the captain, who remained on the bridge, 
smiling at the enemy as they shelled the ves- 
sel. . . . They were so close to the Anglo- 
Californian that they used their rifles, and at 
last serious injury was inflicted on the ship. 



The " Armenian " to the " Persia " 43 

For four hours the shelling continued. Sev- 
eral of the crew were killed, and many more 
seriously injured The captain was b own off 
the bridge with terrible wounds on his head, 
and an arm and a leg completely severed. 
Before his death he had given orders for the 
boats to be launched. This the crew tried 
to do, but they had great difficulty, as the 
ropes got entangled While hey were at 
work several more were killed. Ultimately 
four boats were launched, into which several 
men got and rowed about until picked up by 
vessels which came to their assistance. At 
11.30 the Anglo-Calif ornian succeeded in shak- 
ing off the submarine, and was able to steam 
into Queenstown. 

Captain Parslow's son, who was second 
mate of the vessel, followed his father's cour- 
ageous example. He was by his father's side 
when he was killed. Young Parslow was 
knocked down by the violence of the shock, 
but quickly got on his feet again and seized 
the wheel. He had scarcely done so when 
another shell burst alongside him and shat- 
tered one of the spokes of the wheel, but he 
remained at his post until assistance arrived. 
His gallant conduct undoubtedly saved the 
ship from destruction. 

This is a tale of heroism which ought not to 
be forgotten, buVin this case, as in that of the 
Armenian, the assailants were technically within 
their rights. 

Neither in the spirit nor in the letter of the 



44 The Pirate's Progress 

law was there the shadow of an excuse for the 
next conspicuous achievement of the German 
undersea fleet. At half -past nine in the morn- 
ing of Thursday, August 19, 1915, the White 
Star liner Arabic, one day out from Liverpool on 
its way to New York, was sixty miles off the Irish 
coast when she sighted the steamer Dunsley in 
difficulties and obviously sinking. She altered 
her course and steered towards the Dunsley, 
when suddenly a submarine emerged from be- 
hind it and, without a moment's warning, 
launched a torpedo at the liner, striking her 
about 90 feet from her bows. "Instantly," said 
a passenger, "the vessel trembled — there was 
such a roar as I never have heard and hope never 
to hear again; and a jet of water and debris 
rose up in the air fully 50 feet above the cap- 
tain's bridge. . . . Almost instantaneously the 
boats were lowered from the davits. From first 
to last — it is my unchecked opinion only — the 
vessel was not above eight minutes between the 
moment she was struck and her final explosion 
and disappearance." Fortunately, unlike the 
Lusitania, she retained a more or less even keel, 
so that the boats were got into the water with/ 
comparative ease, and only 30 lives were lost out 
of a total of some 424. Twenty-six of the pas- 
sengers were Americans, and of these two were 
drowned. 

As she was outward bound she could not 



The " Armenian " to the " Persia " 45 

possibly be carrying contraband of war, and the 
wantonness of the misdeed was peculiarly fla- 
grant. The German Government tried to excuse 
it on the plea that the Arabic was attempting to 
ram the submarine, or, alternatively, to escape. 
To this the managers of the White Star Line 
replied : 

There is no doubt that the Arabic was 
struck by a torpedo. Captain Finch did not 
see the submarine, but undoubtedly saw the 
torpedo. There is no question of the Arabic 
having tried to ram the submarine, because it 
was not seen from the bridge. There is no 
question of the Arabic having tried to escape, 
except the very proper precaution of having 
put the helm hard over when they saw the 
torpedo. 

Ultimately the Germans had to abandon 
their impossible position. Count Bernstorff 
stated to the American Government that his 
Government "were convinced that the sub- 
marine commander really thought he was going 
to be rammed; but that they did not feel that f 
they could impugn the word of the British 
officers of the Arabic that such an intention 
never entered their heads, and hence could only 
regret and disavow the act, and promise to pay 
indemnity for American lives lost." 

The next victim of note was the Allan liner 
Hesperian. Outward bound for Canada, she was 



46_ The Pirate's Progress 

torpedoed without warning at 8.31 in the eve- 
ning of September 4, about 84 miles south of the 
Fastnet. "The force of the impact was so great 
that the ship was literally stopped dead, the 
engine ceasing to move." Nevertheless, she re- 
mained afloat for thirty-five hours after being 
struck, but sank before she could be towed into, 
port. She carried 314 passengers and a crew 
of about 250. Thirty lives were lost, mainly, 
no doubt, as a result of the explosion. 

In the winter of 1915 the chief scene of ac- 
tion was transferred to the Mediterranean. The 
first notable victim was the Italian liner Ancona. 
As to the details of its destruction there is a 
good deal of uncertainty. Not even the date is 
quite beyond doubt. A survivor whose narra- 
tive appeared in The Times of November 12 
states that the ship left Naples at 11.15 on the 
evening of Saturday the 6th, called at Messina 
on Sunday the 7th, and was attacked by the 
submarine " exactly at 1 o'clock on Monday 
afternoon." It would appear from this fairly 
circumstantial statement that the date was 
November 8; but the date usually given, and 
accepted by the Italian Government in a state- 
ment issued about a week after the event, is 
November 7. The attack took place off Cape 
Carbonara, in Sardinia, and the submarine, 
which was a large and powerful one, flew the 
Austrian flag. The suspicion originally enter- 



The " Armenian " to the " Persia " 47 

tained that it was in reality German appears to 
have been unfounded; but Austria was certain- 
ly, in this case, acting upon the principles of her 
ally. It seems pretty clear that the Ancona at 
first attempted to escape, and that the first 
shots fired at her were therefore justified; but 
it is also clear that she was bombarded after 
she had surrendered, and that the Austrians did 
their best, by their shell-fire, to heighten the 
panic which broke out on board, thus contribut- 
ing both directly and indirectly to the loss of 
208 lives out of a total of 507. The irreducible 
minimum of the indictment against the assail- 
ant is stated in the second American Note (De- 
cember 22) after the case had been fully investi- 
gated and the report of the Austro-Hungarian 
Admiralty considered. In that report, said the 
American Government, "it is admitted that the 
vessel was torpedoed after the engines had 
stopped and while the passengers were still on 
board. This admission alone, in the view of 
the Government of the United States, is suffi- 
cient to fix upon the commander of the sub- 
marine which fired the torpedo the responsibility 
of having wilfully violated the recognised law 
of nations, and entirely disregarded those hu- 
mane principles which every belligerent should 
observe in the conduct of war at sea." 

It was again an Austrian submarine which 
on Christmas Eve, off the coast of Crete, tor- 



48 The Pirate's Progress 

pedoed without warning the French steamer 
Ville de Ciotat, causing a loss of 80 lives out 
of a total of about 300. From the survivors 
who landed at Malta the correspondent of The 
Times gathered the following details of the 
occurrence : 

The torpedo struck the stern of the ship. 
There was no sign of panic on board. The 
crew set to work to lower the boats, while the 
passengers with great coolness were gathering 
on deck from every part of the ship. Five 
lifeboats and two rafts were released, but one 
boat, containing women and children, cap- 
sized, and the occupants were thrown into the 
water, and all drowned. Another boat was 
smashed against the ship's side. When the 
Ville de Ciotat sank' she carried with her the 
majority of those reported lost. 

The submarine remained off the scene 
until the vessel disappeared, and then circled 
round the lifeboats, jeering at the survivors 
and telling them, " There's a British steamer 
behind — she will pick you up." Five hours 
afterwards the British steamer Meroe picked 
up the survivors and brought them to 
Malta. 

This " jeering," however, may be forgiven in 
view of the fact that the submarine made no 
attempt to sink the Meroe, as a German U-boat 
would almost certainly have done. On the 
other hand, nothing can palliate the attack with- 



The " Armenian " to the " Persia " 49 

out warning on a passenger-ship on which the 
assailants must have known that there were in 
all probability (as there were in fact) numerous 
women and children. 

In the same waters, a week later, a still more 
shocking crime was perpetrated. The P. and 0. 
Liner Persia, bound from London to Bombay, 
was torpedoed without warning at 1.5 p.m. on 
December 30, and sank at 1.10, carrying with 
her 335 souls out of a total of 501. The 
passengers numbered 184, of whom 119 were 
drowned — among them the American Consul 
at Aden. 

Colonel the Hon. C. Bigham telegraphed 
from Alexandria to the P. and O. Company: 

Within five minutes of being torpedoed the 
ship had sunk, and it was impossible to lower 
the starboard boats, owing to the heavy list. 
Five or six boats, however, were able to be 
lowered to port. I did not see this myself, 
as I was washed overboard when the boat 
capsized. 

The conduct of the passengers and crew 
was splendid. There was no struggling, nor 
was there any panic. Four of the boats, 
after having been thirty hours at sea, were 
picked up by one of His Majesty's ships. 

Hard as was the experience of those who 
found places in the boats, it was less terrible 
than that of Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, who 



50 The Pirate's Progress 

thus described the "miracle" by which he was 
saved : 

. . . The port side was submerged in two 
minutes, and the ship sank by the stern, 
dragging me down with her. 

When I was blown up to the surface again 
I saw a dreadful scene of struggling human 
beings. There was hardly any wreckage to 
grasp. . . . After a desperate struggle I climbed 
on to the bottom of a broken boat, with 28 
Lascars and 3 other Europeans. Our num- 
ber was reduced to 19 by Thursday night, and 
only 11 remained on Friday, the rest having 
died from exposure and injuries. 

We saw a neutral steamer pass close by 
on Thursday evening at about 8 o'clock, but 
she took no notice of the red glare shown by 
another of the Persia's boats. I pulled five 
dead men out of the water during the first 
night in the water-logged boat. We saw a 
large steamer three miles away on the next 
day, but she, too, ignored our signals, prob- 
ably thinking they were a ruse of an enemy 
submarine. 

Our broken boat capsized constantly, and 
we were all the time washed by the waves, so 
that we were almost exhausted when the 
second night began. At 8.30 p.m. we saw the 
Alfred Holt steamer Ningchow near us, and 
shouted as loudly as we could. Eventually 
the steamer stopped some way off, again sus- 
pecting a submarine trap, but at last she 
approached and rescued us on Friday night 
at 9 o'clock, after we had been thirty-two 



The " Armenian " to the " Persia " 51 

hours in the sea without water or food, ex- 
cept one biscuit [each] from a tin found in 
the boat, since breakfast-time on Thursday. 

In a fuller narrative which appeared after 
his return to England, Lord Montagu said: 

At sunset on Friday we had practically 
given up all hope of being saved. I said to 
my Scottish friend that it was the last sunset 
we should ever see, and he answered, "Yes, 
I'm afraid our number's up." . . . We cap- 
sized once more about 7 p.m., through the 
Italian turning light-headed. He had yielded 
to the temptation to drink salt water. In this 
accident we lost the tin of biscuits and the 
red flares we had hoped to use during the 
night. 

The courage that sustains men through such 
an ordeal as this is still more wonderful than 
the physical endurance. 

Both Germany and Austria disclaimed re- 
sponsibility for the sinking of the Persia, leav- 
ing it on the shoulders of Turkey. But the 
spirit which inspired the deed was engendered 
in Berlin and nowhere else. 



VII 



AMERICA AND THE " SUSSEX " 

EVER since the Lusitania catastrophe, an 
exchange of notes had been proceeding 
between the American and the German Govern- 
ments with reference to that event, and to the 
rights and wrongs of submarine warfare in gen- 
eral. Each successive crime — and particularly 
the attacks upon the Arabic, the Ancona, and 
the Persia — created a fresh outburst of excite- 
ment in America, and renewed the strain upon 
the chronically tense relations. There was, 
however, no real danger of its reaching the 
breaking point, since President Wilson, now ap- 
proaching the end of his first term of office, 
knew that his country was as yet neither morally 
nor materially prepared for war. On October 
5, 1915, Count Bernstorff had assured Mr. 
Lansing, the American Secretary of State, that 
stringent orders had been given to German sub- 
marines not to attack passenger-ships, "so that 
a recurrence of incidents similar to the Arabic 
case is considered out of the question." As a 



America and the " Sussex " 53 

matter of fact (as we have seen) the murder of 
passengers had, during the winter months, been 
left to Germany's Allies, who had, however, 
operated "as ever in their great Taskmaster's 
eye." At last, on February 9, 1916, the Lusi- 
tania incident was held to have been closed by 
a note from Berlin admitting that Germany had 
not been as careful of the safety of neutrals as 
she ought to have been. She still maintained 
that the sinking of the Lusitania was a justifiable 
retaliation for the British Order in Council; 
but the final effect of her note was this: 

Germany admits, not that retaliation is 
illegal, but that it is wrong where it may affect 
the safety of neutrals. 

This admission is strengthened by an offer 
to pay a full indemnity for the American 
victims, whose loss is deeply regretted. 

Germany repeats the pledge that unarmed 
merchantmen shall not be sunk without warn- 
ing and unless the safety of the passengers 
and crew can be assured, provided, of course, 
that the vessels do not try to escape or resist. 

The final proviso evidently left the door open 
for any desirable amount of barbarity; while 
of the German conception of what is meant by 
" assuring the safety of passengers and crew" 
we have already had specimens enough, and 
shall presently come upon many more. 

Six weeks had barely passed when Germany 



54 The Pirate's Progress 

gave to the United States and the world at large 
a startling demonstration of the worth of her 
promises. At 2 o'clock in the afternoon of 
March 24, 1916, the French passenger steamer 
Sussex left Folkstone for Dieppe, carrying over 
380 passengers, of whom about 270 are stated 
to have been women and children. As she ap- 
proached the French coast, about 4.20, she was 
struck by a torpedo from an unseen submarine, 
which blew the whole fore part of the ship away, 
causing many deaths. Fortunately, the saloon 
bulkhead, though bent inward, stood firm, so 
that the ship remained afloat. As this, how- 
ever, was not to be reckoned on, many of the 
passengers took to boats and rafts, and in so 
doing several lost their lives. The total death- 
roll amounted to about 80; and many of the 
survivors were severely injured, whether by 
the explosion or otherwise. There were 25 
Americans among the passengers, most of whom, 
however, were saved. One of these, Mr. Ed- 
ward Marshall, of the New York Sun, gave a 
vivid description of the catastrophe, which con- 
cluded thus: 

It would be difficult to exaggerate the in- 
dignation which was expressed on board 
among the American survivors. The fact 
that the ship was absolutely unarmed, . . . 
that she carried no munitions, and that no 
portion of her cargo was designed to give 



America and the " Sussex " 55 

comfort to the fighting forces of the Allies, 
combined with the fact that she was known 
to be a boat upon which women and children, 
under the necessity of making the Channel 
passage, inevitably would sail, made the act 
of those who struck at her seem particularly 
inexcusable. To an American who looked 
about upon the company of white-faced, shiv- 
ering women during these long hours of gloom 
and peril before the rescue-ships appeared, 
and who listened to the wailing of the babies 
vainly wrapped against the chilling cold, 
sometimes by strangers' hands, because their 
mothers' hands were still forever, a growing 
feeling of hot anger was inevitable. 

This feeling was widely shared in America, 
and relations between Germany and the United 
States slipped back to the condition of tension 
in which they had stood before the so-called 
Lusitania settlement. 

The German Government at first tried to 
evade responsibility. The Sussex, it suggested, 
was not sunk by a torpedo, but struck a mine. 
When fragments of a German torpedo were pro- 
duced from the wreck (which had been towed 
into Boulogne), Berlin admitted that a U-boat 
had torpedoed a ship on the day in question 
near the spot where the Sussex was attacked, 
but produced a drawing, made by the sub- 
marine commander, of the boat he had waylaid, 
which did not correspond with the appearance 



56 The Pirate's Progress 

of the Sussex, and was held to justify the com- 
mander's conviction that the ship he attacked 
was a mtne-layer of the Arabis class. The con- 
clusion indicated was again that the Sussex 
struck a mine, though no explanation was vouch- 
safed of the fragments of a torpedo among the 
wreckage*. President Wilson, in a note pub- 
lished on April 26, waved aside these subter- 
fuges with polite contempt. He said: 

. . . The Sussex was never armed; she was 
a ship which, as is well known, was regularly 
employed only for the transport of passengers 
across the English Channel. She did not 
follow the route pursued by troop transports 
or munition ships. About 80 passengers, non- 
combatants of every age of both sexes, in- 
cluding citizens of the United States, were 
killed or wounded. 

A careful, thorough, scientific, impartial 
examination by officers of the United States 
Navy and Army has conclusively established 
the fact that the Sussex was torpedoed with- 
out warning or challenge to surrender, and 
that the torpedo with which she was struck 
was of German make. In the view of the 
United States Government, these facts, from 
beginning to end, make the conclusion that 
the torpedo was discharged from a - German 
submarine inevitable. . . . After careful ex- 
amination of the note of the Imperial Govern- 
ment of April 10, the United States Govern- 
ment regrets to have to say that it has derived 
the impression . . . that the Imperial Govern- 



America and the " Sussex " 57 

ment has failed to appreciate the seriousness 
of the situation which has arisen, not only 
out of the attack on the Sussex, but out of 
the whole method and character of submarine 
warfare as they appear in consequence of the 
unrestricted maintenance of the practice of 
indiscriminate destruction of merchantmen of 
every kind, nationality, and designation, dur- 
ing a period exceeding twelve months, by 
commanders of German submarines. . . . 

In pursuit of this policy of submarine 
warfare against its enemy's trade . . . the 
Imperial Government's submarine command- 
ers have practised a procedure of such reck- 
less destruction as made it more and more 
clear during recent months that the Imperial 
Government has found no way to impose on 
them such restrictions as it had hoped and 
promised. The Imperial Government has re- 
peatedly and solemnly assured the United 
States Government that passenger ships, at 
least, would not be thus treated, and yet it 
has repeatedly allowed its submarine com- 
manders to disregard these assurances with 
impunity. .... 

A more delicate way could scarcely have 
been found of informing the German Govern- 
ment that it had systematically lied and broken 
its word. The note proceeded: 

The United States Government has adopt- 
ed a very patient attitude, and at every stage 
of this painful experience of tragedy upon 
tragedy has striven to be guided by well- 



58 The Pirate's Progress 

considered regard for the extraordinary cir- 
cumstances of an unexampled war. ... It 
has accepted the successive explanations and 
assurances of the Imperial Government as 
naturally made in full sincerity and good faith, 
and has desired not to abandon the hope that 
it would be possible for the Imperial Govern- 
ment to regulate and supervise the actions 
of the commanders of its* naval forces in a 
way which will bring their conduct into con- 
sonance with the recognised principles of 
humanity embodied in international law. . . . 

To its pain it has become clear to it that 
the standpoint which it adopted from the be- 
ginning is inevitably right — namely, that the 
employment of submarines for the destruction 
of enemy trade is of necessity . . . com- 
pletely irreconcilable with the principles of 
humanity, with the long-existing, undisputed 
rights of neutrals, and with the sacred privi- 
leges of non-combatants. . . . 

If the Imperial Government should not 
now proclaim and make effective renunciation 
of its present methods of submarine warfare 
against passenger and cargo ships, the United 
States Government can have no other choice 
than to break off completely diplomatic rela- 
tions with the German Government. 

Germany's reply to this peremptory demand 
that she should mend her ways was a conditional 
promise to do so. Its operative clause ran thus: 

The German naval forces have received the 
following orders: In accordance with the gen- 



America and the " Sussex " 59 

eral • principles of visit and search and de- 
struction of merchant vessels recognised by 
international law, such vessels, both within 
and without the area declared as naval war 
zone, shall not be sunk without warning and 
without saving human lives, unless these 
vessels attempt to escape or offer resistance. 

This was merely a somewhat more explicit 
repetition of a pledge already given, and it was 
iccompanied by an expression of " confidence" 
bhat the United States Government would now 
'co-operate" with the German Government 
Howards the restoration of the freedom of the 
seas" and would "insist that the British Gov- 
ernment shall forthwith observe the rules of 
international law universally recognised before 
the war." " Should the steps taken by the 
Government of the United States," the note 
continued, "not attain the object it desires, to 
have the laws of humanity followed by all bel- 
ligerent nations, the German Government will 
then be facing a new situation, in which it must 
reserve itself complete liberty of decision." 
This was as much as to say, "We shall not con- 
sider ourselves bound by this promise one mo- 
ment longer than we find it convenient so to 
do"; but it suited President Wilson's policy 
to treat cynically unreal "concessions" as 
though they were real, while at the same time 
he emphatically declined to allow any weight 



60 The Pirate's Progress 

to the condition attached to the German prom- 
ise. The American Government, he said, " could 
not for a moment entertain, much less discuss, 
a suggestion that respect by German naval au- 
thorities for the rights of citizens of the United 
States upon the high sea should in any way or 
in the slightest degree be made contingent upon 
the conduct of any other Government affecting 
the rights of neutrals and non-combatants. 
Responsibility in such matters is single, not 
joint; absolute, not relative." 

So the discussion ended for the moment in 
a manifestly hollow truce, which maintained a 
precarious existence of nine months — from May, 
1916, until February, 1917. Meanwhile, in 
November, Dr. Woodrow Wilson had been re- 
elected President of the United States. 



VIII 

MINOR BARBARITIES 

THE world is always, and inevitably, im- 
pressed by the magnitude of a disaster 
as measured by the numbers involved. A cry 
of horror goes up when a great liner carries 
hundreds to their doom; but no one pays 
much attention when a tramp or a trawler is 
torpedoed, and its handful of a crew either 
drowned or subjected to such appalling hard- 
ships as make the fate of their dead messmates 
seem the more desirable. Yet the life of a fore- 
mast hand is as dear to him, and his capacity 
for suffering is as great, as that of the million- 
aire who occupies an " Ambassador's Suite" on 
a floating palace. Every man lives his own life 
and dies his own death; and his death is no 
more tragic if a thousand fellow-victims share 
his fate, than if he die alone or along with a 
mere boat's crew of comrades. German piracy 
shows quite as blackly in its individual murders 
as in its wholesale massacres. 

In the case of all vessels attacked without 



62 The Pirate's Progress 

warning — such as the Lusitania, the Arabic, the 
Sussex, and many others — it is clear that the 
assailants set at absolute defiance the rule of 
international law that when a prize has to be 
destroyed due provision must first be made 
for the safety of the passengers and crew. .In 
these cases it was apparently the express pur- 
pose of the submarine commander to kill as 
many non-combatants, as many women and 
children, as he possibly could. The German 
Government admitted, by implication at anj; 
rate, the illegality of these proceedings, and 
promised the American Government over and 
over again that merchant ships should not be 
destroyed without any consideration for the lives 
of passengers and crew. But then came the 
question of interpreting the phrase "due pro- 
vision" for the safety of non-combatants. In 
other wars it had always been understood as 
meaning that they should be subjected to no 
more than the ordinary risks of maritime travel. 
Previous practice has thus been summarised by 
Sir Frederick Smith in his book on "The De- 
struction of Merchant Ships" (p. 49): 

During the American Revolution, Paul 
Jones removed the persons on board before 
destroying a captured vessel; and when he 
could [not?] do so he released his prize. Simi- 
larly in the war of 1812 this rule was observed. 
In the case of the Felicity — to give but one 



Minor Barbarities 63 

example — "the officers and crew, together 
with their clothes and other property, had 
been removed on board the Endymion" and 
the Felicity was destroyed. In the American 
Civil War, Captain Semmes, the notorious 
commander of the Alabama, did not hesitate 
to destroy his prizes, but invariably removed 
first the persons on board. When it was 
found impossible to do so, he released the ship. 
Thus he released the Ariel, a valuable prize, 
"and sent her and her large number of pas- 
sengers on their way rejoicing," because he 
could not find any accommodation for them. 
Before the destruction of the Hatteras, which 
was, moreover, a warship, "every living being 
in it was safely conveyed to the Alabama." 
"We were making war," he observed, "upon 
the enemy's commerce, not upon his unarmed 
seamen. It gave me as much pleasure to treat 
these with humanity as it did to destroy his 
ships." . . . Again, in the Russo-Japanese war, 
the crews of captured vessels were removed 
before destruction was effected. In the pres- 
ent war British commanders scrupulously ob- 
served the rule; and on several occasions Ger- 
man cruisers, e. g., the Emden, the Karlsruhe, 
the Eitel Friedrich, did the same. 

There could be no doubt, therefore, that, in 
le light of all previous practice, "safety" must 
s taken to mean safety, and not imminent and 
ireful danger. It was only when the U-boat 
ime on the scene that it occurred to any hu- 
tan being to suppose that the requirement as 



64 The Pirate's Progress 

to "due provision for the safety of passengers 
and crew" was fulfilled when they had been set 
adrift in open boats, at any season, in any 
weather, and at such distances from land as to 
render their ultimate rescue extremely problem- 
atical, and to ensure them, in the best event, 
hours and days of the acutest suffering. As a 
matter of fact, German " humanity," as thus 
exercised, has often inflicted on its victims such 
tortures that it would have been humaner to 
have drowned them at once. 

As the Germans began to build more power- 
ful U-boats their sphere of action was naturally 
enlarged, and we find them pursuing their 
amiable calling at great distances from land. 
The following is a table of the distances from 
the nearest land at which certain ships have 
been sunk, and their passengers and crews com- 
mitted to open boats: 

SHIP MILES FROM LAND 

Alnwick Castle ... .... 320 

Caithness (38 lives lost) 240 

Karila 230 

Rona 212 

Franconia (12 lives lost) 195 

Silver ash . . 180 

Galgate 170 

Jolo ......... 155 

Bernadette (26 lives lost) 150 

Cymric (4 lives lost) 140 

Rowanmore 128 

City of Birmingham 126 

Industry , 120 

Italiana 112 

Lady Ninian (1 life lost) 106 



Minor Barbarities 65 

Numberless are the tales of appalling hard- 
hips, often ending in death, which have resulted 
'om the dastardly practice of leaving sailors 
ad passengers at the mercy of wind and weather 
1 open boats — thus 

Keeping the word of promise to the ear, 
To break it to the hope. 

Here are a few examples: 

The Umeta was sunk without warning, and 
ne of her crowded open boats was left adrift 
•om December 1st to December 5th. One man 
ied from thirst and exposure. 

The crew of the Cottingham were forced to 
ike to their boats on December 26. There were 
x men in the captain's boat, which was picked 
p in a few hours. Of the chief officer's boat 
othing was heard until it drifted ashore bottom 
pward on the Welsh coast. Of the seven men 
; had contained there was no trace. 

The Clan Macfarlane was torpedoed without 
earning on December 30, 1915, in the Mediter- 
inean. The crew of 76 got clear in six boats, 
'hey tried to make the coast of Crete, but 
rere prevented by stormy weather. For nine 
ays they were tossed about at the mercy of 
rind and wave. In every boat men died, one 
y one, of exposure — the Lascar seamen first, 
hen the Europeans. Two of the boats were 
bandoned, and the survivors of their crews 



66 The Pirate's Progress 

taken on board the other boats; but at last the 
remaining four were separated, and it was only 
a single boat, with its emaciated, exhausted 
crew, that was picked up on January 7 by the 
steamship Crown of Arragon. The other boats, 
with their occupants, were never heard of again. 

The Windermere was shelled by an Austrian 
submarine in the Mediterranean, at a point 
about 40 miles from Port Mahon. The crew 
abandoned her in two boats, containing 12 
men each. The chief officer's boat reached Las 
Sabinas in Majorca the next day. The master's 
boat was never heard of again. 

The Scottish Monarch was sunk by shell fire 
about 40 miles south from Ballycotton Light. 
The master and 19 of the crew left the ship in 
one boat, the chief officer and 14 hands in the 
other. The remainder of the story is thus re- 
lated by Mr. Alfred Noyes in "Open Boats": 

The two boats kept together till dark; but 
at 8.40 the chief officer's boat capsized, owing 
to the choppy sea, and sight of the other boat 
was lost in the confusion. 

All hands, after a struggle, managed to 
regain the boat, but she remained full of water, 
with her tanks adrift. Before midnight she 
had again capsized three times; and the 
reader may imagine for himself what scenes 
were enacted in that lonely darkness of wind 
and sea. Only four hands out of the fifteen 
were left at the end of the third desperate 



Minor Barbarities 67 

struggle. They were the mate, the carpenter, 
and two seamen. They saw one or two ves- 
sels in the early morning, but their only means 
of signalling was a handkerchief on a stick, 
and they were not noticed. 

The boat was battered to and fro like a 
cockle-shell in the smoking seas; and about 
eight o'clock in the morning the two seamen 
became too exhausted to cling on. They were 
slowly washed overboard. Their faces and 
hands swirled up once or twice in the foam, 
and then disappeared. 

At five o'clock on that day, after long 
hours of struggle, the mate, who was sitting 
aft, gradually dropped into the water in the 
bottom of the boat and died there. The car- 
penter was now the only survivor. All that 
he endured in the long following night and 
day, with the dead man washing to and fro 
at his feet, and the dead face looking up at 
him through the bubbling water, can only be 
imagined. He says that " nothing particular" 
happened. At nightfall on the next day, 
more than twenty-four hours later, twenty- 
four hours of lonely battering and slow star- 
vation, he and the dead body were picked up 
by a Grimsby trawler and landed at St. Ives. 
Nothing was ever heard of the other boat. 

The poet who imagined the torments of the 
Lncient Mariner imagined nothing more terrible 
han this product of the realistic German genius. 

The crew of the Coquette were forced to 
abandon her, in two open boats, by a U-boat 



68 The Pirate's Progress 

which first looted and then sank her. The 
master's boat made land in North Africa, where 
three of the crew were killed, and ten taken 
prisoner and held to ransom by Bedouin Arabs. 
The chief officer's boat was never heard of again. 

The Tringa was sunk by an Austrian sub- 
marine. One of the boats was picked up after 
drifting for forty-eight hours. The lifeboat, con- 
taining the captain and thirteen sailors, was 
never heard of again. 

" Never heard of again" — that is the monot- 
onous refrain in scores of cases. In the case of 
the Rappahannock, which sailed from Halifax on 
October 17, 1916, the whole ship, with its crew 
of 37, was never heard of again, except in the 
German wireless which reported its destruction. 
Germany cannot complain if this gives rise to 
the darkest suspicions. It was one of her own 
charges d'affaires, Count Luxburg, who recom- 
mended that the ships of the Argentine Repub- 
lic, in which he was the accredited agent of a 
friendly (!) power, should be spurlos versenkt — 
sunk without leaving a trace; and there is little 
doubt that in some of the cases in which the 
boats of a sunken ship have been deliberately 
shelled, the object was to leave no one alive to 
betray the presence of a submarine in the region 
in question. Dead men tell no tales. 

Thus, for instance, after the Westminster had 
been attacked without warning (December 14, 



Minor Barbarities 69 

916> : n the Mediterranean, and sunk in four 
ninutes, her boats were shelled from a distance 
>f 3,000 yards, and one of them was sunk, the 
laptain and chief engineer being killed outright 
md five other men drowned. The North Wales, 
ike the Rappahannock, disappeared altogether, 
ave for a line in the German wireless report, 
rhe Kildale was torpedoed in the Mediterranean, 
md as she sank the U-boat came to the surface 
t,nd opened fire upon the boats with guns and 
ifles. She would doubtless have succeeded in 
exterminating the survivors had not two British 
>atrol boats appeared on the scene and put her 
o flight. 

The Times of August 20, 1917, published a 
ist of twelve authenticated instances of sub- 
narines firing on survivors who had escaped in 
>pen boats. In eight of these cases the ship 
unk was British, in two Swedish, in one Danish, 
md in one Dutch. 

When the Alnwick Castle was torpedoed 320 
niles from the nearest land, and the survivors 
lad taken to the boats, the whole crew of the 
ubmarine came on deck and stood with folded 
trms, laughing at their plight. The acting fourth 
jfficer of the Thracia, torpedoed off the coast of 
France, April 27, 1917,thus relates his experiences: 

I was on a capsized boat with the stern 
blown off, about two and a half to three hours 
after the ship was sunk. The submarine 



70 The Pirate's Wogress 

came near me — at the time (11 p.m.) it was 
very dark — and asked what ship it was that 
she had sunk, where was she from, where was 
she for, what was her cargo, and was I an 
Englishman? 

I answered all the questions. 

He then said: "I am going to shoot 
you." I told him to shoot away. 

He then said: "I don't waste powder on 
any pig of an Englishman," and left me in 
the boat. In the morning, at 10.30, I was 
picked up by a French fishing-boat. 

Another instance of German geniality fol- 
lowed the sinking of the steamship Jupiter 
(May 21, 1917), with the loss of 19 lives. To 
the six survivors, who got away in an open boat, 
one of the crew of the submarine shouted: 
" You've no home now, but there's room for you 
below." 

On January 27, 1917, at a time when Ger- 
many still purported to be bound by her promise 
to the United States as to saving non-combatant 
lives, the British steamship Artist was sunk 
48 miles from land, in a bitter midwinter gale. 
One of the boats was picked up three days later. 
It had originally contained 23 men, but 7 had 
died of wounds or exposure. The Admiralty, 
in reporting the case, justly remarked that to 
pretend that anything had been done to ensure 
the safety of the crew would be sheer hypocrisy. 

On April 19, 1917, the British steamship 



Minor Barbarities 71 

Caithness was torpedoed without warning, 240 
miles from land. The master and 20 men went 
down with the sinking ship. The rest of the 
crew, about 20, managed to right a cap- 
sized boat in which, a gradually dwindling com- 
pany, they drifted for fourteen days, without 
any food, before a West Hartlepool steame.t 
picked up the remnant. There were then three 
living men on board the boat and one corpse, 
which the living were too weak to throw over- 
board. One of the three survivors died on the. 
day of rescue. 

Though British seamen were, of course, the 
favourite and by far the most numerous victims 
of maritime "Kultur" neutrals were very far 
from being exempt from its operations. It 
cannot even be said that Germany made any 
clear discrimination between neutrals who were 
friendly to her and neutrals who were really 
neutral. The countrymen of the great Kaiser- 
worshipper, Sven Hedin, and of the obsequious 
diplomats who were transmitting cipher mes- 
sages from German agents in Spanish America, 
came in for several shrewd knocks at the hands 
of their neighbours across the Baltic. We have 
just seen (p. 69) how, in two instances, Swedish 
crews were shelled in their boats by the sub- 
marines which had sunk their ships. As Nor- 
wegian vessels, however, were the most numer- 
ous and most daring in the northern waters, 



72 The Pirate's Progress 

they were the most frequent victims. At the 
end of 1916, even before the days of confessedly 
" unrestricted " f rightfulness, official returns 
showed that 278 Norwegian ships had been sunk 
either by U-boats or mines, and 204 sailors had 
lost their lives. During the first six months of 
1917, 308 ships and 421 lives had to be added 
to the account, making a grand total of 586 
ships and 625 lives. The steadfastness and in- 
trepidity of Norwegian seamen have all along 
been worthy of the highest admiration. 

Some of the more conspicuous instances of 
Germany's treatment of Norwegian shipping are 
worth recording. On June 9, 1915, the Svein 
Jarl was torpedoed without warning. The whole 
front part of the ship was blown away, and she 
sank in thirty seconds, the propeller still whirl- 
ing as she took the last plunge. Five men were 
picked up after passing many hours in the water. 
Twelve lives were lost. 

On June 6, 1916, the Prosper III., possibly 
mined, but much more probably torpedoed with- 
out warning, went to the bottom in fifteen sec- 
1 onds. One man saved his life by clinging for 
sixty hours to the keel of an overturned boat. 
He had three companions at first, but they 
dropped off one by one. In all 29 lives were lost. 

The Ravn was sunk by gunfire in the Arctic 
Ocean on September 29, 1916. Though a gale 
was blowing, with frequent blasts of snow and 



Minor Barbarities 73 

hail, and the sea ran very high, the U-boat ren- 
dered no assistance whatever. The captain's 
boat, with six men, was never heard of again. 
The mate's boat reached land with two dead 
men aboard her. Their bodies were taken 
ashore, but were washed away by the waves in 
the course of the night; and before morning 
came two other men had died of cold and ex- 
posure. 

After the proclamation of "unrestricted" 
warfare in January, 1917, the favourite German 
method of treating Norwegian ships was to shell 
them without warning or parley, and without 
giving the crew a moment's grace to take to their 
boats. The lives of many sailors have been 
sacrificed to this wanton brutality. On June 13 
the sailing ship Carmel was towed into Peter- 
head, very much damaged by gunfire. In the 
cabin was the body of a man whose head had 
been shot off. All the rest of the crew had dis- 
appeared, and have never been heard of. Some 
ten days later, on the night of June 24, as the 
steamship Kong Haakon was passing through 
the Bay of Biscay under convoy, a U-boat sud- 
denly appeared alongside of her, and at a distance 
of about 35 yards poured into her a withering 
fire, which converted her into a shambles. 
Nineteen lives were lost and only 4 saved. 

In several cases the Germans were guilty of 
an almost incredible extreme of brutality in 



74 The Pirate's Progress 

leaving women to share the perils and agonies 
of exposure in open boats in mid-ocean. The 
captain of the Norwegian steamship Dalmata 
had been recently married, and took his wife 
with him for her first sea-voyage. The ship 
was torpedoed on February 11, 1917, though 
the presence of a woman on board was well 
known to the U-boat commander. In the Chris- 
tiania Aftenpost the lady gave this account of 
her experiences: 

Fortunately we had sails, a small cask 
of water, biscuits, and some other victuals, 
but no lights. We rowed for the whole of the 
day and sailed during the night, when it was 
pitch dark. We were in the middle of the 
Atlantic, and our signals of distress were not 
observed. . . . The sea was extremely heavy, 
it was piercingly cold, and my two coats and 
blanket were soaked as the result of the sea 
washing over the boat. 

On Tuesday (February 14) our food and 
water failed. One man in my boat died from 
the frost on Tuesday morning, and most of 
the others were ill. On Wednesday morning 
there was still no prospect of rescue, and we 
knew not where we were drifting. ... I lay 
down in the bottom of our boat, prepared to 
die. . . . My arms and legs were like sticks, 
and my eyes bloodshot from staring. At nine 
next morning we came within view of the 
schooner Ellen Benzon, which rescued us. 
The rough sea prevented her coming along- 
side, and I was hoisted up by a rope. 



Minor Barbarities 75 

They had been five days and some hours at 
the mercy of the wintry Atlantic. 

A month later (March 13, 1917) it was the 
turn of the Swedish schooner Dag. She was 
sunk 200 miles west of the Scillys, and the 
captain, his wife, and eight men were adrift in 
an open boat for four days and three nights. 

The Danish steamer Hropatyr was torpedoed 
on December 22, 1916, off Ushant. A heavy 
sea was running, and the boats had just been, 
lowered with great difficulty, when the sub- 
marine came rushing up and struck the lifeboat, 
hurling it against the steamer's side. The cap- 
tain was crushed to death, his head being severed 
from his body, and a sailor received injuries 
from which he afterwards died. 

It might have been imagined that a civilised 
nation, even if it adopted the principle that 
"necessity knows no law" (Not kennt kein 
Gebot), and therefore assumed 'the right to de- 
stroy the whole world's shipping, would at least 
show some discrimination in favour of neutrals, 
and try to carry out the work of destruction as 
considerately as possible. There is, in fact, no 
trace of any such effort. It almost seems as if 
the furor Teutonicus wreaked itself upon neutrals 
with a peculiar gusto. That they were in no 
way distinguished from enemies is apparent 
from the fact that they were not only sunk at 
sight, but were frequently pillaged before being 



76 The Pirate's Progress 

disposed of. Thus the captain of the Danish 
steamer Daisy gave evidence before the Shipping 
Court at Copenhagen to the effect that, before 
sinking his ship in the Atlantic, the Germans 
packed up provisions, instruments, and other 
articles in eight large sacks and forced the 
Danish sailors to assist in removing them to the 
submarine. "The captain's map of the Bay of 
Biscay, which was essential for navigating the 
lifeboat, was seized, as well as nearly all the 
bread in the lifeboat's lockers." So, too, the 
captain and crew of the Norwegian sailing ship 
Fremad, who were picked up after spending five 
days and nights in an open boat, stated that 
before sinking the ship the Germans annexed all 
the provisions on board, " broke open boxes and 
cupboards, and looted all valuables." Since the 
beginning of 1917, indeed, the looting of Nor- 
wegian ships has been the rule rather than the 
exception. Even articles of personal property, 
such as cigarette cases and the photographs in 
the captain's cabin, have been carried off. The 
Germans have supplied themselves liberally with 
blankets and whisky, while denying to the luck- 
less men in the boats any such mitigation of 
their lot. It seems as though their chief object 
in life has been to make themselves as widely 
and as deeply hated as possible. 

The tale of minor misdeeds — that is to say, 
outrages affecting only cargo boats as distinct 



Minor Barbarities 77 

from passenger liners — could with ease be in- 
definitely extended. It is probable that these 
small-scale atrocities have, in the aggregate, 
caused more protracted and acuter suffering to 
a greater number of people than was caused by 
the wholesale massacres at which the world 
stood aghast. This may almost certainly be 
inferred, indeed, from the figures as to loss of 
life on British merchant vessels given in the 
House of Commons on June 30, 1917. It was 
stated that 9,748 non-combatants had been 
done to death, of whom 3,828 were passengers, 
while 5,920 were officers and seamen. In a very 
few instances the Germans had no doubt the 
letter of the law on their side, since the vessels 
were attempting to escape; but the proportion 
of lives lost under these conditions was cer- 
tainly infinitesimal; and the attempt to escape 
was morally if not legally justified by the fact 
that there was no guarantee, and indeed no 
probability, that the crew (or passengers) of 
ships which surrendered would meet with the 
humane treatment prescribed by international 
law. 



IX 

MURDER BY SUBMERSION 

THE Nietzschean Uebermensch — the Super- 
man — as soon as he tried to put in prac- 
tice his superiority to such human weaknesses 
as chivalry and compassion, was bound to 
develop into the Untermensch, or, as we may 
put it, the Subterman. Germany, with all her 
cult of Shakespeare, has forgotten the pregnant 
lines: 

I dare do all that may become a man; 

Who dares do more is none. 

The man who seeks to rise above humanity in- 
evitably sinks below it. There is something 
symbolical, then, in the fact that the worst 
atrocities (if, indeed, degrees of comparison are 
possible between deeds of unmitigated black- 
ness) should be committed by men whose busi- 
ness it is to sink into the sunless, airless under- 
world, and there lie in ambush to murder and 
hide from vengeance. Untermensch, or Subter- 
man, is thus a peculiarly apt designation for the 
U-boat pirate — the man who haunts the deeps, 



Murder by Submersion 79 

it beneath the normal low-water mark of hu- 
tan nature. 

As it seems to be the chief ambition of the 
epical Subterman to exhaust all possible meth- 
Is of cruelty, it was natural that he should not 
/erlook the fairly obvious device of gathering a 
amber of helpless people on the deck of his 
ibmersible craft, and then diving from under 
lem and leaving them to drown. In this 
ieasant sport he has indulged on various occa- 
ons. 

The steamship La Belle France, bound from 
Karachi to Dieppe, had just passed through the 
uez Canal and was proceeding up the Mediter- 
mean, when, on February 1, 1916, she was 
>rpedoed without warning. As she at once 
sted heavily to starboard, all hands were or- 
3red to the port side boats, two of which were 
wered. Mr. Alfred Noyes, in "Open Boats," 
ms describes what followed: 

The Lascar boat crews were ordered to 
keep close alongside the ship, but they be- 
came panic-stricken in face of the new fright- 
fulness, and cast off from the ship without 
orders. The master and three other officers 
jumped into the drifting boats from the deck. 
The chief officer, who was standing by the 
falls, and the chief engineer, who was stopping 
the engines, were left on board as the boats 
drifted away. 
; The chief officer dived overboard and was 



80 The Pirate's Progress 

picked up by No. 3 boat. The chief engineer, 
being unable to swim, remained on board till, 
as the vessel righted herself, he succeeded in 
getting into No. 2 starboard boat, which was 
partly lowered. After about hah an hour he 
was picked up by No. 3 boat. 

No. 4 boat, in the meantime, had capsized. 
Some of the crew were swimming, and others 
were clinging to her bottom. The submarine 
rose to the surface, came alongside, and picked 
up these men. No. 3 boat was then called 
alongside the submarine by the officer in com- 
mand, and was ordered to stand by. The officer 
of the submarine took his revolver and threat- 
ened to shoot both crews if they came nearer. 

At this moment four trawlers were seen 
on the horizon; and the submarine, sublimely 
oblivious of the shivering men it had just 
hauled on to its deck, dived with the whole 
bunch of them still standing there, and left 
them to flounder to the surface as best they 
could. Some of them were saved by No. 2 
boat, but 19 were drowned, a good many 
being sucked down by the diving submarine. 
A delay of a very few seconds, of course, 
would have made it possible to save them all. 

Another case of the same manoeuvre followed 
the torpedoing of the Norwegian steamer Fjeldli, 
in May, 1917. On board one of the boats which 
left the steamer were the steward and his wife. 
This boat was ordered to come up to the sub- 
marine, as it was wanted to carry bombs for 
the destruction of another Norwegian steamer, 



Murder by Submersion 81 

te Randane, which had been held up at the 
Line time. The steward and his wife were told 

► go on board the submarine; but the com- 
inionway leading to its interior was too narrow 
) allow them to pass with their life-belts on, 

> they were made to take them off. The 
-boat commander then questioned the steward 
5 to the whereabouts of a certain ship that 
id left Bergen on the same day as the Fjeldli, 
Lit could get nothing out of them. He and his 
ife were therefore ordered back to the deck 
r the submarine, but their life-belts were not 
^stored to them. The hatches were then closed 
Dwn, and the luckless pair were left alone on 
eck. Soon afterwards a destroyer hove in 
ght, and was evidently observed by means of 
le periscope, for the U-boat submerged with- 
ut any warning and left its involuntary guests 
juggling in the sea. Both were sucked down 
3 the vessel dived, but when they came to the 
irface again they found themselves close to 
ne of the boats of the Fjeldli, and were thus 
iscued. The Germans could not possibly have 
ilculated on this happy ending to the episode, 
'hey had simply no thought to spare for such 

trifling matter as the lives of a Norwegian 
lan and woman who had had the audacity to 
ut to sea in defiance of the prohibition issued 
y the German Empire. 

It would be absurd to call the German 



82 The Pirate's Progress 

Subterman a coward. His service is an extreme- 
ly dangerous one: he has death constantly at 
his elbow, and that in a peculiarly disagreeable 
form. Far better, surely, to die in open battle 
than to be drowned like a rat in a trap. But 
such cases as this of the Fjeldli, and that of La 
Belle France, place the submarine commanders 
concerned in an awkward dilemma: they show 
them to be either wantonly murderous or sub- 
ject to such fits of panic as to render them ob- 
livious of manifest duties which they could easily 
perform with no appreciable risk. The cool, 
collected courage which always keeps its head 
is evidently no part of their moral outfit. 

In the more famous case of the Belgian Prince 
there is no room for the theory of murder in 
panic or murder by inadvertence. Here the ver- 
dict can only be deliberate and wilful murder — 
the order had apparently gone forth that the 
Belgian Prince was to be spurlos versenkt. She 
was torpedoed without warning about eight in 
the evening of July 31, 1917. The crew escaped 
in three boats — two life-boats and a small jolly 
boat. What then occurred may be narrated in 
the words of Mr. Thomas A. Bowman, chief 
engineer, whose story is confirmed in all essen- 
tials by the two other survivors: 

When the submarine came round to the 
starboard side he started to fire at the ship's 
side with a machine-gun. By this time every- 



Murder by Submersion 83 

body was clear of the ship, and the boats were 
about 200 yards from the ship. The sub- 
marine came up to where the boats were and 
ordered the boats to come alongside. 

The commander ordered the master to 
step on the submarine, after which he took 
him down in the submarine. Then all the crew 
and officers were ordered aboard, searched, 
and the life-belts taken off most of the crew 
and thrown overboard. I may add, during 
this time the Germans were very abusive 
towards the crew. After this the German 
sailors got into the two life-boats, threw the 
oars, bailers, and gratings overboard, took 
out the provisions and compasses, and then 
damaged the life-boats with an axe. 

The small boat was left intact, and five 
German sailors got into her and went towards 
the ship. When they boarded her they sig- 
nalled to the submarine with a flash lamp, 
and then the submarine cast the damaged 
life-boats adrift and steamed away from the 
ship for about two miles, after which he 
stopped. 

About 9 p.m. the submarine dived and 
threw everybody in the water without any 
means of saving themselves, as the majority 
of them had had their life-belts taken off them. 
After this I was swimming about all night 
until daylight, when I saw that the ship was 
still afloat, so I was swimming towards her 
with the intention of boarding her when sud- 
denly I saw her explode aft and sink stern 
first, which was about 5.30 a.m. 

After swimming about for some time I saw 



84 The Pirate's Progress 

smoke on the horizon, so I swam towards it. 
It proved to be an English patrol boat, which 
picked me up at about 6.30 on Wednesday 
morning. There were only three survivors out 
of a crew of 42 men all told. The master was 
taken away in the submarine. The total loss 
of life was 38. 

The other survivors, G. Silessi and Willie 
Snell, an American, say not merely that the 
life-belts were taken off "most of the 6rew," 
but that all life-belts had to be given up. The 
crew, says Snell — 

were ordered to hold their hands up, then 
"Take your life-belts off"; they were asked 
if they had any arms, and told to lay their 
life-belts on the deck. One of the officers then 
threw seven or eight of the belts overboard 

Snell had succeeded in secreting a life-belt 
under his raincoat. Silessi kept himself afloat 
all night without any life-belt. We may pre- 
sume that Bowman contrived to secure a life- 
belt, though he does not say so. 

The murderous intention is manifest. What 
other motive could there be for destroying the 
life-boat? Be it noted that the master (now, 
no doubt, a prisoner in Germany) had been 
taken below from the beginning, and would 
know nothing of what was proceeding on deck. 
If, on emerging from captivity, he had found 



Murder by Submersion 85 

lat all his crew had disappeared without a 
*ace, he would have had no reason to doubt 
lat they had got off in the life-boats, and had 
mply been lost at sea. It was only the acc- 
idental survival of the engineer and two sea- 
len that brought the atrocity to light. But 
>r that, the Belgian Prince, like the Rappa- 
annock and the North Wales, would have been 
ourlos versenkt. 



X! 

HOSPITAL SHIPS AND RELIEF SHIPS 

THE frenzy of destructive malevolence which 
has possessed the German mind is in 
nothing more conspicuous than in the attacks 
upon hospital ships and upon Belgian relief 
ships. The former are, indeed, the more atro- 
cious, but the latter are the more insane. To 
sink a hospital ship is to do appreciable dam- 
age, to the enemy, though by infamous means; 
to destroy relief ships, which are employed not 
only in supplying the needs of the Belgian 
population, but in " relieving" Germany of one 
of her most manifest duties, has all the air 
of that proverbially idiotic proceeding, " cut- 
ting off one's nose to spite one's face." 

We have seen that attacks on hospital ships 
began very early in the war. On February 1, 
1915, at 5 p.m., a torpedo was discharged at 
the hospital ship Asturias, but fortunately 
missed her. Of the fact there is no possible 
doubt — indeed, it is admitted by the Germans. 
The captain's report ran as follows: 



.Hospital Ships and Relief Ships 87 

At 4.15 p.m. on February 1, with the 
P.M.O., I inspected ship, finishing at 5 p.m. 
Going toward the bridge from the main 
saloon, Mr. Fletcher, cadet, reported to me, 
torpedo just fired at us passing astern. I at 
once went on the bridge, and upon the Second 
Officer confirming the statement that he 
observed the wash of a submarine two points 
on the starboard beam, I at once starboarded 
3^2 points, sending down to the engine-room 
instructions to give the ship all steam possible. 
After that, until passing the lightship, I made 
a zigzag course. . . . 

Apart from the testimony of my officers 
a number of people on board not only saw 
the course of the torpedo, but also observed 
the submarine following in our wake. 

It was a very light and clear evening, and 
at 5.15 broad daylight, and in no possibility 
could the character of the ship be mistaken. 

The German excuse, delivered through the 
Embassy at Washington, was that the Asturias, 
" looming up in the twilight," was in fact mis- 
taken for a transport. We should perhaps give 
the commander the benefit of the doubt, and 
condemn his seamanship rather than his hu- 
manity; but even this, in the light of sub- 
sequent events, is a little difficult. 

The first successful attack upon a hospital 
ship was perhaps- not the work of a German 
U-boat; but even if the criminal was nominally 
Turkish, she may very likely have been manned 



88 The Pirate's Progress 

by Germans; and at all events the Turks 
would not have ventured on such an atrocity 
had they had any fear of incurring the censure 
of their German masters. 

The Russian hospital ship Portugal — a con- 
verted French liner, still navigated by her French 
officers and crew — lay off the Turkish coast of 
the Black Sea on the morning of March 17, 1916. 
She was carrying no wounded, but the Red Cross 
staff was on board and the full crew. She had 
in tow a number of flat-bottomed boats, used 
in transporting the wounded from the shore to 
the ship; and, one of these having filled with 
water, she was stationary for the moment while 
the water was being pumped out. The ship 
was painted white with a red border all round. 
The funnels were white with red crosses, and 
she flew a Red Cross flag. The morning was 
clear, and any mistake as to her status was out 
of the question. 

Her fate is thus narrated by an official of the 
Russian Red Cross Society: 

At about 8 o'clock in the morning, some- 
body on board shouted out, " Submarine 
boat." At first this news did not produce 
any panic ; on the contrary, everybody rushed 
on deck to be the first to see the submarine. 
It never entered anybody's head to suppose 
that a submarine would attack a hospital 
ship, sailing under the flag of the Red Cross. 



Hospital Ships and Relief Ships 89 

I went on to the upper deck, and noticed 
the periscope of a submarine moving parallel 
with the steamer at a distance of about 170 
or 200 feet. Having reached a point opposite 
to the middle of the Portugal, the periscope 
disappeared for a short time, then reappeared, 
and the submarine discharged a torpedo. I 
descended from the upper deck and ran to 
the stern, with the intention of jumping into 
the sea. When, however, I noticed that most 
of the people on deck had life-belts, I ran 
into saloon No. 5, seized a life-belt, and put 
it on, but then I fell down, as the Portugal 
was sinking at the place where she was broken 
in two, while her stem and stern were going 
up higher all the time. All round me un- 
fortunate sisters of mercy were screaming for 
help. They fell down, like myself, and some 
of them fainted. The deck became more 
down-sloping every minute, and I rolled off 
into the water between the two halves of the 
sinking steamer. I was drawn down deep 
into the whirlpool, and began to be whirled 
round and thrown about in every direction. 
While under the water I heard a dull, rumbling 
noise, which was evidently the bursting of 
the boilers, for it threw me out of the vortex 
about a sazhen, or 7 feet, away from the 
engulf men t of the wreck. The stem and stern 
of the steamer had gone up until they were 
almost at right angles with the water, and the 
divided steamer was settling down. At this 
moment I was again sucked under, but I 
exerted myself afresh, and once more rose 
to the surface. I then saw both portions of 



90 The Pirate's Progress 

the Portugal go down rapidly and disappear 
beneath the flood. 

It is needless to dwell upon the horrors of 
the scene which followed. One such catastrophe 
is very like another, and, thanks to the sublime 
consistency with which Germany has trans- 
lated her principles of warfare into practice, 
the wholesale drowning of men and women, not 
only non-combatant, but devoted to deeds of 
mercy, has become so familiar an incident that 
we are only too glad to take its details for 
granted. Suffice it to say that 21 nurses were 
drowned, and 24 other members of the Red 
Cross staff, together with 21 Russian and 19 
French seamen — a total death-roll of 85. 

The first British hospital ship to fall a victim 
to Kultur was the Britannic, the largest British 
ship afloat. She was torpedoed on the morning 
of November 21, 1916, off the island of Zea, 
near the southern extremity of Attica. As she 
was outward bound she carried no wounded, 
but over 100 of her crew and of the medical 
staff lost their lives. The Germans admitted 
that she was torpedoed, but justified the act on 
the ground that she was carrying troops. The 
falsity of this allegation was proved by the 
clearest evidence. The total number of persons 
on board was 1,125, of whom 625 belonged to 
the crew, and 500 to the medical staff, con- 



Hospital Ships and Relief Ships 91 

sisting of the following R.A.M.C. ranks and 
ratings: 

Officers 25 

Nurses . . . . . 76 
Sergeants, hospital orderlies, dis- 
pensers, laboratory attendants, 
operating-room attendants, 
skiagraphists, nursing order- 
lies, clerical staff . . . 399 



500 



The Germans alleged that "the large num- 
bers of persons on board . . . justified the forcible 
suspicion of the misuse of the hospital ship for 
purposes of transport"; whereupon it was 
pertinently retorted that, according to the 
"Handbuch fur die deutsche Handelsmarine " 
for 1914, the total complement of the German 
liner Imperator, of about the same size as the 
Britannic, was 1,184 officers and men. Rightly 
considered, indeed, the figures amounted to an 
absolute disproof of the German allegation; for 
had the Britannic been carrying troops at all, 
she would certainly have carried not hundreds, 
but thousands. 

Three days later the hospital ship Braemar 
Castle was sunk in the same waters; but it has 
not been clearly established whether her loss 
was due to a torpedo or to a mine. 

The Germans had long prepared the way for 



92 The Pirate's Progress 

attacks on hospital ships by spreading ground- 
less reports as to their wrongful use, which the 
Admiralty had more than once categorically 
denied. As to these falsehoods The Times wrote 
as follows: 

One of the first of them stated that Ger- 
mans in Portsmouth Harbour had reported 
that two hospital ships started from there 
daily for France, deeply loaded, returning 
regularly unloaded. ... It was therefore sug- 
gested that the ships carried war material and 
ammunition under the protection of the Red 
Cross. This palpable lie was possibly based 
on a substratum of truth, since hospitals re- 
quire supplies; 1 but it indicated the eager- 
ness of the German official mind to find ex- 
cuses for unlawful acts. 

Later in the year the German Wireless 
elaborated other charges of the kind. Reports 
from Spain were said to have told of large 
numbers of hospital ships having been seen 
on their way to the Mediterranean. The ships 
had become much more numerous, it was 
alleged, since the activity of the U-boats in 
that sea. Sworn statements were also said 
to be in German possession that war ma- 
terials had been carried in such ships, labelled 
"soft soap." Describing "the biggest fraud 
the British navy has practised," a German 
message, on November 21, 1915, spoke of 70 
British transports having passed Gibraltar, 



1 Also, hospital ships "bunker" in England, and naturally re- 
turn with their coal-bunkers depleted. 



Hospital Ships and Relief Ships 93 

all " heavily laden and painted like hospital 
ships, on their way to Greek waters." In 
denying all these stories, the Admiralty said 
that there were 42 British hospital ships 
working to and from the Mediterranean, and 
although all were fully ballasted to secure 
safety and comfort, they were not " deeply 
laden," but, on the contrary, were generally 
some feet higher than deep draught. Other 
counts in the indictment were similarly dis- 
posed of. In view of the allegations, how- 
ever, the hospital ship Mauretania was exam- 
ined at Naples by the American, Danish, and 
Swiss consuls, who jointly signed a declaration 
that there were neither combatants nor war- 
like stores on board her. 

These accusations show that German spies 
were conscientiously earning their pay by mak- 
ing suggestions which the German authorities 
were all the readier to believe, as they attrib- 
uted to Britain a policy which, had the posi- 
tions been reversed, they themselves would 
doubtless have adopted without the smallest 
hesitation. 

When, in January, 1917, the German Gov- 
ernment resolved upon its great gamble, and 
announced the policy of " unrestricted" U-boat 
warfare, it did not fail to disclaim even the 
restriction placed by international law upon the 
sinking of hospital ships. Its great aim was to 
reduce the world's tonnage, no matter to what 



94 The Pirate's Progress 

ends the tonnage was applied. It accordingly 
announced that it held "conclusive proof " of 
the misuse of hospital ships for the transport 
of munitions and troops, 1 and that therefore 
"the traffic of hospital ships . . . within lines 
drawn between Flamborough Head and Ter- 
schelling on the one hand, and from Ushant to 
Land's End on the other, would no longer be 
tolerated." To this the Foreign Office made the 
following reply: 

His Majesty's Government . . . most em- 
phatically deny that British hospital ships 
have been used for the transport of munitions 
and troops, or in any way contrary to the 
Hague Convention for the adaptation of the 
principles of the Geneva Convention to mari- 
time war. 

Under the Convention belligerents have 
the right to search hospital ships, and the 
German Government have therefore an ob- 
vious remedy in case of suspicion, a remedy 
which they have never utilized. 

From the German Government's state- 
ment that hospital ships will no longer be 
tolerated within the limits mentioned, only 
one conclusion can be drawn, namely, that i% 
is the intention of the German Government 
to add yet another and more unspeakable 
crime against law and humanity to the long 
list which disgraces their record. 

1 For the Admiralty's detailed and crushing answer to these 
charges see White Paper, Miscellaneous No. 16 (1917), Cd. 8692. 



Hospital Ships and Relief Ships 95 

Whether from some lingering scruple, or, 
more probably, from lack of opportunity, seven 
weeks passed before any attack — any successful 
attack, at any rate — was made upon a hospital 
ship. The Asturias, which had escaped destruc- 
tion two years earler, was the first victim. 
She was torpedoed without warning on the night 
of March 20, when she was steaming with all 
navigating lights and with all the proper dis- 
tinguishing Red Cross signs brilliantly illumi- 
nated. Of the medical staff 14 lost their lives, 
including one female staff nurse, and of the 
ship's company 29, including one stewardess. 

Ten days later (March 30) the Gloucester 
Castle was torpedoed without warning in mid- 
channel. All the wounded, however, were suc- 
cessfully removed from the ship. 

On the evening of April 17, two ships, the 
Donegal and the Lanfranc, were torpedoed with- 
out warning, while transporting wounded to 
British ports. The Donegal carried slightly 
wounded cases, all British, and 29 of these 
wounded men, along with 12 of the crew, lost 
their lives. The Lanfranc, in addition to 234 
wounded British officers and men, carried 167 
wounded German prisoners, a medical staff of 
52, and a crew of 123. The lives lost were as 
follows: 2 wounded British officers, 11 British 
wounded of other ranks, 1 of the medical staff, 
5 of the crew, 2 wounded German officers, 13 



96 The Pirate's Progress 

German wounded of other ranks. One of the 
rescued British officers, writing in the Daily 
Telegraph, described the scene as follows: 

The Lanfranc was attacked by a sub- 
marine about 7.30 on Tuesday evening, just 
as we had finished dinner. A few of us were 
strolling to and fro on the deck when there 
was a crash which shook the liner violently. 
This was followed by an explosion, and glass 
and splinters of wood flew in all directions. 
I had a narrow escape from being pitched 
overboard, and only regained my feet with 
difficulty. In a few minutes the engines had 
stopped, and the Lanfranc appeared to be 
sinking rapidly, but to our surprise she 
steadied herself, and, after a while, re- 
mained perfectly motionless. . . . The moment 
the torpedo struck the Lanfranc, the Prussians 
made a mad rush for the life-boats. One of 
their officers came up to a boat close to which 
I was standing. I shouted to him to go back, 
whereupon he stood and scowled. "You 
must save us!" he begged. I told him to 
wait his turn. Other Prussians showed their 
cowardice by dropping on their knees and im- 
ploring pity. Some of them cried "Kamerad," 
as they do on the battlefield. I allowed none 
of them to pass me. 

Meanwhile, the crew and the staff had 
gone to their posts. The stretcher cases were 
brought on deck as quickly as possible, and 
the first boats were lowered without delay. 
Help had been summoned, and many vessels 
were hurrying to our assistance. In these 



Hospital Ships and Relief Ships 97 

moments, while wounded Tommies — many 
of them as helpless as little children — lay 
in their cots unaided, the Prussian morale 
dropped to zero. Our cowardly prisoners 
made another crazy effort to get into a life- 
boat. They managed to crowd into one, but 
no sooner had it been lowered than it toppled 
over. The Prussians were thrown into the 
water, and they fought with each other in 
order to reach another boat containing a 
number of gravely wounded British soldiers. 
The behaviour of our own lads I shall 
never forget. Crippled as many of them 
were, they tried to stand at attention while 
the more serious cases were being looked after. 
And those who could lend a hand scurried 
below to help in saving friend or enemy. I 
have never seen so many individual illustra- 
tions of genuine chivalry and comradeship. 

The German Government afterwards offered 
to call off its war on hospital ships on two im- 
pudent conditions: first, that all such ships 
should pursue a route to be prescribed by Ger- 
many; second, that a Spanish officer should sail 
in each ship to guarantee that it was applied to 
no improper uses. These proposals were natu- 
rally treated with contempt by the British Gov- 
ernment. Since the sinking of the Donegal and 
the Lanfranc, hospital ships no longer carry any 
distinctive marks, as these were found simply 
to attract the pirates. 

The first Belgian relief ship to discover 



98 The Pirate's Progress 

that her mission implied no immunity was the 
Harpalyce, a four-masted steamer of nearly 6,000 
tons, which was sunk on April 10, 1915, while 
proceeding in ballast from Rotterdam to Nor- 
folk, Virginia. She flew a white flag bearing the 
words "Commission for Belgian Relief " in such 
large letters as to be visible at a great dis- 
tance; and the same inscription was painted 
in large letters on her sides. In addition to all 
this, she carried a safe-conduct signed by the 
German minister at the Hague. But none of 
these precautions availed — she was torpedoed 
without warning, and sank before the boats 
could be lowered. Seventeen out of her crew 
of 44 lost their lives. 

In the case of the Greek steamer Embiricos, 
neither her nationality (at the time when Greece 
was acting as the obedient tool of Germany) 
nor the fact that she was carrying a cargo of 
maize for the Belgian Relief Commission, proved 
any safeguard to her. The crew were cast adrift 
in two open boats at nightfall, though the 
weather in the channel was very stormy and 
the sea ran high. One boat's crew, after suffer- 
ing great dangers and hardships, was rescued by 
a Brixham trawler. The other boat was never 
heard of again. 

Since the proclamation of unrestricted fright- 
iulness, relief ships have been systematically 
destroyed. One of the first victims was the 



Hospital Ships and Relief Ships 99 

Storstad, sl large Norwegian steamer, unhappily 
famous in her day as the ship which ran down 
the Empress of Ireland in the estuary of the 
St. Lawrence. She was now carrying a cargo 
of maize for the Belgian Relief Commission, and 
bore a stamped declaration by the German 
Consul at Buenos Ayres that she complied with 
the requirements of a Belgian Relief ship, and 
would not be molested by German submarines. 
On the morning of March 8, 1917, she was fired 
upon, and stopped, displaying her big signboard 
with the words "Belgian Relief Commission." 
The Germans satisfied themselves by question- 
ing the crew that she was what she purported 
to be — a neutral ship with a neutral crew, en- 
gaged on an errand of mercy. (It is not quite 
clear whether the safe-conduct was actually 
exhibited or not.) Nothing availed to save her. 
The crew were forced to take to their boats, and 
the ship was sunk by gunfire. The submarine 
refused even to take the boats in tow. They 
drifted for thirty-six hours, and three men died 
of exposure before they were rescued. 

The relief ship Trevier was sunk a month 
later (April 4) off Scheveningen, and a shell was 
fired as the boats were being lowered, wounding 
eight men. The Norwegian steamer Camilla, in 
spite of a safe-conduct, was sunk without warn- 
ing; eight lives were lost, and the nine sur- 
vivors, after drifting through five days of snow- 



100 The Pirate's Progress 

storms and heavy weather, were landed in 
Norway. Further instances of the same nature 
are thus summarised in the Times History of 
the War (Part 158, p. 65): 

Yet another relief ship sunk in April was 
the Carnetta. Despite the fact that this vessel 
carried papers signed by the German am- 
bassador at Washington, she was not allowed 
to proceed when stopped by a U-boat in 
the North Sea. The signed papers were 
shown to the submarine commander, but he 
refused to acknowledge them, and ordered 
the crew to leave the ship, which was sunk. 
The two boats into which 23 sailors were 
crowded were not allowed to take any sup- 
plies with them. After six days of terrible 
suffering one of them reached Norway, but 
not before five of the crew had died of gan- 
grene or starvation. Two more died later! . . . 
Similarly, the Norwegian - Owned steamer 
Kongsli, chartered by the Belgian Relief Com- 
mission, was torpedoed while in a locality 
declared by the Germans to be a safe zone. 

The systematic nature of these acts of de- 
struction seems to show that they cannot be 
put down to the irresponsible truculence of in- 
dividual U-boat commanders. There must have 
been some political design in thus tightening 
the hunger-screw upon unhappy Belgium. 



Conclusion 105 

moment had arrived to strike her great knock- 
out blow. 

Why should she shrink from throwing over- 
board the last pretence of any respect for hu- 
man feeling, to say nothing of neutral rights? 
Let her but succeed, and all the priests and all 
the moralists (she thought) would rise up and 
call her blessed. Had not Nietzsche written: 
"Ye say it is the good cause which hallo weth 
even war? I say unto you, it is the good war 
which hallo weth every cause." 

What followed is too well known to call for 
recapitulation in detail. On January 31, 1917, 
Germany proclaimed her intention of sinking 
at sight every ship encountered in the waters 
around the British Isles and France, and in the 
Mediterranean. America was notified of Ger- 
many's " expectation " that her Government 
would "warn American ships against entering 
the barred zones," and American citizens against 
entrusting their lives or goods to vessels bound 
for ports in the "blockaded" countries. By 
way of adding insult to injury, one American 
ship a week was to be allowed to have access to 
England, provided it was striped like a zebra 
and followed a prescribed route. 

President Wilson's answer was immediate 
and emphatic. On February 3 he announced to 
Congress that he had handed Count Bernstorff 
his passports and had thus severed diplomatic 



106 The Pirate's Progress 

relations between the United States and the 
German Empire. Two months later (April 6) 
the United States was formally declared to be 
at war with Germany. 

The U-boat had thus proved to be the imme- 
diate occasion, though, of course, not the sole 
cause, of one of the greatest events in history — 
the union of the whole English-speaking world 
in the struggle for humanity, democracy, and a 
lasting peace. This is such a wonderful achieve- 
ment that maritime ruthlessness comes almost 
to wear the appearance of a providential means 
to an incomparably beneficent end. But though 
we may tell ourselves that those who have died 
in agony through German crimes have at least 
not died in vain, this reflection cannot, and 
ought not to, diminish the horror with which 
we regard the frenzy of national egoism, the 
sophistical perversion of all decent moral feeling, 
which has degraded a great Empire to the point 
of seeking to vindicate its claim to world power 
by means of a systematic course of murderous 
piracy such as the world, even in its darkest 
ages, never saw before. 



THE END 



CONCLUSION 

THE purpose of these pages has been to 
give in brief compass some typical in- 
stances of the new element of almost fiendish 
cruelty introduced into maritime warfare by 
the German employment of the submarine as 
a commerce destroyer. Anything like an ex- 
haustive record would have been impossible. In 
the first place, the materials are not available; 
in the second place, if they were, the story 
would run into many volumes. On the other 
hand, an honest effort has been made to give 
full credit to the legal and honourable aspect of 
U-boat warfare, and to overlook no recorded 
instance of humanity on the part of German 
commanders. 1 

No stress has been laid on the brighter side 
of the picture — the bravery, often amounting to 
heroism, displayed by British, Allied, and neu- 
tral merchant seamen, and by the passengers of 
torpedoed liners. 

1 A few — a very few — instances of some approach to humanity 
are noted in the official reports of the Norwegian Government, 
issued since these pages were in type. 



102 The Pirate's Progress 

This aspect of the case is worthy of a separate 
study. In part, indeed, it has already been 
ably dealt with by Mr. Alfred Noyes and other 
writers. There have been numberless cases like 
that of the Ellerman liner City of Birmingham, 
torpedoed without warning November 27, 1916, 
in which the conduct of the crew and passengers 
was admirable throughout. The masti 
that "the women took their places in 
as calmly as if they were going down 
meals, and when in the boats the; 
singing." 

The incidents here related (except in 
to hospital and relief ships) almost all bi 
the two and a half years before Germ; 
clared her policy of " unrestricted" pira 
murder. In the interval between May • 
and January, 1917, the promise made 
United States that merchant vessels shoi, 
be sunk "without warning and without i 
human lives" had been flagrantly violai 
unnumbered instances; but great liners hi 
joyed a relative immunity. Meanwhile 
many had treated the United States to ai 
dacious U-boat "demonstration." On Oci 
7, 1916, the submarine U 53 made its api 
ance at the fashionable seaside resort, Newi 
where the German ambassador was then s 
ing. After exchanging with him (no doi 
much useful information, and after having b 



Conclusion 103 

visited and admired by all Newport, the sub- 
marine took its departure within the prescribed 
twenty-four hours, and proceeded to place itself 
in the crowded fareway outside the entrance to 
the port of New York, and there to sink six 
ships — four British, one Dutch, and one Nor- 
wegian. In each case warning was given, and, 
thanks to the presence of American destroyers 
on the scene, all lives were saved. This pro- 
ceeding was the more intolerable as the Ameri- 
can Government had, during the previous win- 
ter, demanded and obtained the withdrawal of 
certain British and French cruisers which had 
been hovering in American waters. Although 
the United States made no formal protest against 
the exploit of U 53, President Wilson summoned 
Count Bernstorff to his country house in New 
Jersey, and told him that it must not be re- 
peated. As a matter of fact, the adventurous 
submarine was no more heard of on that side 
of the Atlantic; but several incidents occurred 
in the course of the autumn to save America 
from falling under the illusion that Germany 
paid any special regard to , her susceptibilities 
or to the lives of her citizens. When the Marina 
was torpedoed without warning in the Atlantic, 
six Americans were done to death, and the 
survivors were left to drift for more than thirty 
hours, in wild weather, before they were picked 
up by a patrol boat. The German excuse was 



104 The Pirate's Progress 

that the U-boat commander took her for a 
transport — a mistake which would have been 
avoided had he exercised his right of visit and 
search. Again, the American steamer Chemung 
was torpedoed with her flag flying; but the 
crew were all saved, the submarine having 
towed their boats some distance. Seventeen 
American lives were lost on board the Russian, 
but that ship really was a transport. 

It was obvious from the first that Germany 
had no intention of being bound by her promise 
of May, 1916. She had constantly broken it, 
in fact; and the proviso with which she had 
guarded it (immediately repudiated, as we have 
seen, by President Wilson) showed that she 
was prepared at any moment to annul it in 
theory. She did not actually wish to take the 
extreme measure of nailing the black flag to the 
mast and announcing a campaign of " unre- 
stricted" piracy. If the war on land had taken 
the course she hoped, or if the gamble of the 
Battle of Jutland had turned in her favour, 
this final breach with legality and humanity 
might have been avoided. But, disappointed in 
both these contingencies, she at last saw in the 
U-boat her sole salvation. Meantime, she had 
been feverishly building up a submarine fleet, 
adequate, as she supposed, to the great enter- 
prise of starving Britain into submission; and 
at the end of January, 1917, she thought the 



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